


Anamnesis

by rants_skellington



Category: Saints Row
Genre: Johnny Is A Cop AU, M/M, Stripper AU, this is the most important work of my life au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-05
Updated: 2015-12-28
Packaged: 2018-03-21 10:27:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 30,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3688782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rants_skellington/pseuds/rants_skellington
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Julius Little is dead. All that’s left of The 3rd Street Saints is graffiti in the seediest corners of Stilwater, fading away like those of the other gangs of yesteryear. With the Ronin gone, war rages between the Brotherhood and Sons of Samedi, the former remaining the undeniable king of the streets as the Sons lose Shivington to Ultor’s slowly advancing renovation work. The Saints haven’t been heard from in years, not since a certain unnamed individual and their accomplice escaped prison, only to vanish into thin air…</p>
<p>Johnny Gat is a cop. A shitty one, his reputation tarnished by an investigation gone wrong, the death of a fellow officer on his hands. Looking to drown out his sorrow, his usual visit to Tee’N’Ay takes a strange turn; a stripper going by the name Minx offers him an invitation that leads him to discover just what kind of phantom haunts the Underground Caverns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is a collaboration between me and my friend [Vinkumakkara](http://http://vinkumakkara.tumblr.com/tagged/Saints-Row%3A-Anamnesis). More information and the concept art work they've done can be found [here.](http://vinkumakkara.tumblr.com/post/115601843051)

“Mayor Hughes continues her campaign for senate, holding a press conference earlier today to address the press’ queries about her stances on the hotly debated policies of the moment. She stood against Senator Jenkins’ proposed revisions to the open carry laws in Michigan, but is still in favour of the currently controversial anti-obscenity laws. Hughes went on to say that calling the laws “a ban on male strippers” was an extreme oversimplification. Later Hughes was accused of avoiding discussion of the seemingly “never-ending” gang problems in Stilwater. Hughes declined to comment on this.

“Head of Ultor Special Projects, Dane Vogel, was also present at the press conference as a show of Ultor’s continuing support of Hughes’ campaign, but was not available for interview. He directed all questions to Ultor’s most recent press release, which claims that the remodelling of Sunnyvale Gardens will go ahead, following the successful remodelling of Shivington.

“In recent gang-related news, members of the Brotherhood and the Sons of Samedi once again clashed in the Suburbs over what is now considered “unclaimed territory”. Chief of Police Troy Bradshaw assured the public that the gang troubles will end soon, saying new measures are being taken. Chief Bradshaw says that with only two gangs left in Stilwater, the PD will be able to more easily focus their efforts against the groups.

“In more positive news, Aisha is once again in the news after her recent-”

Johnny turned off the radio. He’d been in a good mood for… Almost a minute and a half total. He hadn’t even gotten out of Saint’s Row yet, car idling at a red light barely a few metres from the police station, and any joy he’d gotten from escaping work was already dead. That had to be some kind of new record. If he turned he could still see the hell-hole out of the back window. He adjusted the rear-view mirror in some lame attempt at ‘out of sight, out of mind’, but the settling bitterness in his gut couldn’t be shifted. He’d been intending to go home but he found himself taking the road out of Harrowgate and straight into Rebadeaux. Better find something to distract himself than resign himself to boredom all night.

There were still cranes in Shivington, the renovations not as finished as Ultor liked to admit. Work had been excruciatingly slow. And now they were already talking about gentrifying Sunnyvale… Wasn’t something Johnny saw happening anytime soon. Sunnyvale had been a warzone for as long as he could remember. The Samedi might have been lured out of Shivington long enough for Ultor to get their perfectly manicured talons in it but where were they going to go if they left Sunnyvale? He strongly doubted the Sons were going to be able to keep any hold on the Suburbs, not if the Brotherhood had their sights on it. No one could stand against the Brotherhood. The Ronin couldn’t, the Sons of Samedi couldn’t… The cops couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. He wasn’t sure which.

Tee‘N’Ay looked the same as it always did, gaudy pink letters above the front door, neon flashing signs dim and unimpressive in the evening light. Walking under the sign and through the double front door Johnny was aware of creeping boredom in the back of his mind. Entering the main room beyond the foyer he collapsed on a stool at the bar, back to the girls on the poles. He put his elbows on the bar and then found that they became immediately soldered to the surface. He pulled back, the material making a sound akin to velcro. He decided to keep his arms to himself, ordering a beer and staring vaguely into the middle-distance while the music pounded and he ignored everyone else.

He took the depressingly warm beer when it arrived and walked away from the bar and back up the short steps to the booths. He sat on one of the couches there, sinking back into the red plush, the material clammy and stained with glitter. There was a girl working the single pole next to the booths and he watched her with casual disinterest. He’d probably seen her before, but he didn’t particularly recognise her. He knew a few of the girls here by name.

His boredom frustrated him. It was true he’d been to Tee’N’Ay a lot recently- and Technically Legal, and other places besides- but he hadn’t anticipated being bored. Who the hell got fed up with strip clubs? He tried to concentrate on the girl but he just couldn’t stop his mind from straying, couldn’t shut down and just enjoy himself. His inability to alleviate his bad mood was putting him in a worse mood, trapped in a descending spiral of annoyance. He took a long drink of beer.

It pissed him off how fast even a mention of her name could ruin his day. She seemed increasingly inescapable, especially in Stilwater, where everyone was just so proud of having an actual celebrity of their own. Thinking about her left a pressure in his chest that he called anger but in truth felt more like sickness. He shut his eyes, taking a deep breath of stale air, trying to clear his mind. Ignoring a bullet wound would be easier than ignoring her.

“You don’t look like you’re having a very good time there, hun.” A hand stroked down his chest, fingers brushing over the buttons on his shirt. He looked up at the girl looking down at him; fair, blond, wearing a disarmingly cutesy bow in her hair. He tried to force a smile but the end result was more effort than it was worth.

“I’m fine,” he said. She sat on his lap, arm draped around his shoulders, smiling at him in a manner that was distressingly pitying.

“You bored of this place?” She asked gently. He tried to blow the question off but she had an unusually piercing look in her eyes that made him feel slightly like he was under the microscope.

“I didn’t pay for a private dance,” he said instead.

“I’m not giving you one,” she said, a little curt. “I’m giving you some advice.”

She gave him a business card. That was not exactly what he had been expecting, but he took it, curiosity winning out over confusion. The card was black and purple, with only a few words written on the one side. ECHO the card said, the letters large and faux-metallic. The only other words on the card assured him that ECHO was ‘The answer to your call’, and gave no explanation of what his call was. He looked up at the dancer and she leaned in close, her mouth to his ear.

“You make your way down to the Phantom Caverns and you’ll find a place for the true artists,” she whispered. “The ones who really believe.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“If you’re bored of regular clubs then there are other options,” the woman said, voice heavy with meaning that Johnny couldn’t understand.

“You better not be talking about some furry shit or something because lady you are barking up the wrong-”

“No I don’t mean fucking furries,” she snapped, her patience limited, losing the falsely seductive tone momentarily. She leaned in again, keeping her voice low. “Echo is a club for people who aren’t allowed to share their art.”

It didn’t take Johnny a lot to catch on.

“You’re telling me there’s an illegal male stripclub in the underground caverns,” he said.


	2. The Answer To Your Call

“Tell ‘em Minx sent you,” Minx said, standing up and posing with her hand on her hip, that sweet little false smile plastered on her face like another layer of makeup.

“How exactly am I supposed to find it?” Johnny said.

“There are triplets there, three who mark the spot.”

“What?”

“If you cannot see them, there are those who may know the way, if you have something in kind. They can help you find the three points of the X.”

“What?”

Minx sighed. “There are three rocks by the entrance, Jesus Christ. Have fun.”

She walked off. He stood, half a mind to follow her, but she was already in conversation with another customer and he didn’t particularly want to interrupt. He felt further questioning would be poorly received. She wasn’t a very open person. He left the club, heading to his car.

Leaving the parking lot he had no plan. There was no thought when he turned left, driving through the Red Light district and down south. He knew he was going to the caverns. Johnny wasn’t much for thinking ahead. Chief Bradshaw had called him ‘terrifyingly reckless’. ‘Unable to operate with any regard for the safety of others or himself’. ‘Likely to end up killing himself or everyone around him’. These were bad qualities for a police officer to have, apparently. That was why he’d gotten himself suspended for months and demoted to the basement to work on the shit case no one cared about or took seriously. None of it had been his fault but people just weren’t capable of listening to reason.

He was almost surprised by how easily the anger returned when he started thinking about it all again. The flash of hot bitter rage in his chest was painfully raw. He hadn’t signed up for Stilwater’s finest to be stuck hunting down male strippers with other cops who had been judged too incompetent to work on cases actually worth anything. He knew he’d just been stuck down there so he couldn’t fuck up badly enough to do damage to anything actually important. It was more of a punishment than the suspension had been. He braked too hard at a red light and ignored the horn of the car behind him blaring.

If there was a club in the caverns, if Minx wasn’t just winding him up, this could be a huge break in the case. It would get a lot of publicity, what with the anti-obscenity laws being the only thing the news was talking about. Mayor Hughes would probably personally thank him. He’d have to get a promotion for that. Bradshaw would have to get off his back for that. He knew the chief didn’t give a shit about catching strippers but it would look great in the public eye and that counted for everything, especially when keeping the chief position depended on the mayor liking you.

That was the reasoning Johnny had decided upon. That was why he was rushing off to the caverns. He shook his head, trying to stop himself from trying to justify his actions to an invisible audience. He could do anything he wanted. He was Johnny fucking Gat.

The Phantom Caverns technically weren’t open at this time in the evening, not on a weekday. They’d be open later for the ‘Spooky Midnight Tours’, which primarily involved sheets draped over stalagmites and creative uses of flashlights, but for now the giftshop looked empty. There were cleaning supplies sitting conspicuously in the middle of the floor but no one in sight. He let himself in and followed the cheerful ghost mascot’s directions down the stairs. His footsteps echoed in the dead silence. The emptiness of the caverns did add some genuine creepiness to a place that he normally thought of as a fairly pathetic tourist trap.

The air in the caverns was cold, the walls shimmering wet in the dim light. When he exhaled he could see his breath hanging in the air. There was no sound, there was no indication that anyone was alive down here. He kept walking, down through the stone corridors deeper into the caverns. The quietness made him more alert, his ears straining for any sound other than his own footsteps and the constant splash of falling water. He wouldn’t have called himself nervous but he kept a hand close to his gun. It hadn’t occurred to him to tell anyone where he was going and the further he walked into the darkness the more he wondered if that could have been a good idea. Well, too late now. He probably could have turned back, if he wanted to. If he really wanted to.

He didn’t.

When Johnny did hear sound it made him slow his pace, until he realised it was Stilwater’s resident homeless population. A few people looked wary when they saw him walking cautiously over the ramshackle wooden bridge, trying not to slip on the damp rock. This couldn’t be the right way. This looked like a dead end, three paths converging on an arrowhead point that was full of shacks and shelters. He didn’t know what the fuck he was looking for. He’d seen a metric fuckton of rocks and absolutely no sign that he was getting any closer to a club, secret or otherwise.

There was a man sitting on a mattress on the other end of the bridge. He looked vaguely concerned about Johnny’s presence but didn’t say anything.

“Do you know where…” Johnny tried to work out what to say. Where the three big rocks are? “Where the… The triplets are? The three… The rocks. The three big rocks.”

The man on the mattress politely resisted laughing in Johnny’s face, although he looked like he was considering it. He pointed across to the furthermost tunnel out, over to the wall. Johnny looked. He could see three pillars of stone there, neither stalagmites or stalactites but some fusion of the two. He gave the guy on the mattress five bucks before heading over there.

There was a tunnel there. You could barely see it unless you were standing right in front of it. It was long, narrow, and black as pitch, but there was something at the end. A glimmer of something in the darkness. He hesitated a second but the idea of not going in, of turning and running back the way he came seemed repulsive to him now. He was no coward. And what the hell did he have to be scared of? Admittedly there was a chance they would immediately know he was a cop and he could get shot, but if walked around being afraid of getting shot all the time he’d never get anything done.

Into the claustrophobic tunnel he went, ignoring the slime on the walls brushing against his shoulders. Whatever kind of soundproofing they had in the club was certainly efficient, he was only just beginning to hear the faintest strain of a bassline and if he hadn’t been looking for it he still might not have noticed it at all. He was so far away the carefully roped-off tourist areas that the chance of someone accidentally running into this place seemed borderline impossible. At least then that meant he wasn’t going to get caught.

The sound grew louder as he made his way to the white door at the end of the tunnel. There was nothing marking the entrance other than the door itself, a large white plastic-looking door set into the rock. The wall around it looked deliberately carved, too evenly flat to be natural. This had been made to be hidden.

He laid a hand on the door. End of the line. Destination reached. Oh God, he hadn’t thought this through at all. What was he letting himself into? The time for doubt had been before he got himself lost in the maze of caverns. Now he had to take action. He took a deep breath and then shoved the door open, walking head-first into a wall of sound.

The club was dark, it was flushed with purple light, and the air around Johnny vibrated with sound and heat. He stepped into the foyer and let the door slam behind him, making a sound like a vacuum sealing. The main stage was positioned so it was the first thing you saw when you walked into the room, a long elevated wooden platform that was lit up from all sides by spotlights. There were two other smaller poles on the opposite side of the room to the main stage, booths on the wall beside the door, a bar across the room from Johnny. The seats were surprisingly full; people watching the dancers, crowding the bar, talking to the men making their way around the room. It looked like a normal club. He hadn’t been expecting this. He’d been half expecting something that looked like a rotting basement.

The main stage was attracting all the attention, the purple and pink pulsing lights deliberately dragging your eye. The purple plush seats surrounding it were filled with eager onlookers, all eyes on the man on stage. Johnny looked around a little more, aware that he was attracting some attention from his refusal to move from where he was standing at the door. He couldn’t see any bouncers, although there was a large bearded man in a blue hawaiian shirt behind the bar who was talking to a smaller, nervous looking man in a suit but was definitely keeping an eye on Johnny. Johnny already had him pegged as the owner. He had a certain presence, like someone surveying his- admittedly small and dark- kingdom.

It was hot in the club, with the lights and the cram of bodies, a stark contrast to the sickly chill of the caverns. The air was hazy and the lack of any natural lighting gave the whole place an oddly dreamlike quality. A waiter by the door walked up to Johnny, wearing short-shorts and a ‘please tip me’ smile.

“Welcome to Echo,” he said. “You’ll find yourself amongst true artists and appreciators here.”

“Yeah,” Johnny said. “Minx already gave me the spiel.”

“Oh it’s not a spiel sir, it’s the true principle behind the club. We really believe in our art here,” the waiter said, with a salesman’s confidence. “This place was made as a haven from unjust censorship.”

“Right,” Johnny said, because he wasn’t sure what else there was to say.

“If you’d like to take a seat, the next show is about to start,” the waiter said, indicating one of the empty tables in the middle of the room and leading Johnny over to it. “We also have a two drink minimum.”

He left Johnny at the table to go and take a drink order from someone who looked less like they were in entirely alien environment. Johnny reminded himself he was supposed to be scoping this place out for the case. But then again, he did really want a beer. And it would look bad if he didn’t follow their- obviously very important- rules.

The speakers overhead crackled into life as the announcer spoke.

“Coming  from the heart of the Row in a blaze of gunfire it is the one, the only, the incredible and unkillable Fleur-de-lys!” The announcer was altogether rather too enthusiastic.

There was something very off about the dancer walking onto the stage. The other dancers in the room, the ones on the smaller peripheral stages, they weren’t especially remarkable. They were good, but he’d seen good dancers before, there wasn’t anything surprising about that. The man on the main pole was something else altogether, and the word Johnny was looking for was definitely not ‘good’.

There was something about the swing of their arm that made Johnny think that the arc normally ended with their fist crunching into bone. The thrust of their leg should have impacted into chest, shattered ribs, their steel-toed boots were made to crush skulls. They weren’t graceful, they weren’t even in time with the music, they were engaging in a fight against themselves. Their every motion seemed implicitly linked to violence, made to destroy. In a class on krav maga it would have been impressive, but in a strip club it was out of place, like opening a box of chocolates and finding a hand grenade.

Something that Johnny found a little unsettling about it all was the look on Fleur-de-lys’  face. They were keenly, intensely focused in a way he had never seen. They didn’t try to flirt with the audience, didn’t try to make themselves sexy- and really that was the biggest problem with their dance as a whole. It wasn’t sexy. It wasn’t sexy and they looked like they were so caught up in what they were doing that they hadn’t even realised they were being watched. It was painfully candid, earnest to a degree that made Johnny almost uncomfortable. He wasn’t surprised when he realised people were laughing.

There was a group sitting at the main stage, and he realised quickly they were all wearing Brotherhood colours. That changed things. The caverns were in Brotherhood territory but he hadn’t stopped to consider the gang’s involvement. Seeing them brought up instinctive rage in Johnny, blood boiling. He couldn’t hear what they were saying but he could pick up on the tone of their voices, the way their faces twisted when they jeered and cat-called. But no one was doing anything, they were being left to shout obscenities unhindered. Where was the security? Why was no one making these guys shut up?

They were getting on his nerves already. Fleur-de-lys was ignoring them but Johnny couldn’t, filled with hatred for their rudeness and their aggressiveness and the gang they were affiliated with. The owner behind the bar had vanished into a backroom and the small man in the suit had his head bent over whatever it was he was working on. The waiters were carefully avoiding the group, trying to serve customers and act like nothing was going on.

Then one of the Brotherhood made a grab for Fleur-de-lys, reaching out to drag an unwanted hand over their leg and Johnny decided enough was more than enough. He stood up, striding across to the five Brotherhood and grabbing Handsy on the shoulder to turn them to face him.

“Who the f-” Handsy said before Johnny interrupted.

“So the no touching rule don’t apply to you?” Johnny said. “Does that go both ways?”

“What?”

Johnny swung a punch before Handsy could register a fight had broken out, fist crushing into his windpipe.  He stumbled backwards, eyes bulging out of his skull, and Johnny turned, picking up one of the chairs behind him. When another member lunged he brought the chair crashing down on the back of her head, sending her sprawling to the ground.

Everything else in the club had stopped, people scrambling away from the fight scene. The only one still going was Fleur-de-lys who was apparently so caught up in their dance that they hadn’t even registered the fight going on on their behalf. Johnny didn’t have time to be impressed with their focus, ducking out of the way of a fist flying at his face. He hit the man low, driving a fist into his stomach, but didn’t manage to get out of the way of the bottle crashing down on his skull. He was momentarily stunned, doubled-over, but he broke into a charge, barrelling into the attacker. He could feel he was bleeding but he tried to ignore it, wiping blood off his forehead before it got in his eyes.

Someone tried to grab his arms from behind but he threw himself backwards, knocking them into the chairs and table behind them. The two of them fell to the ground but he tried to stay in control, using his weight to pin them and then get in a good few blows with his elbow. When another Brotherhood got too close he lashed out, kicking her in the knee hard enough to buckle it. He hauled himself to his feet, kicking the downed girl again to put her out of action.

The first guy he’d hit was back, so he hit him again, a bad punch that was like slapping straight into muscle. The man was unimpressed, landing a decent hit on Johnny’s ribs that could have cracked something if he hadn’t been prepared for it. Johnny went for a low-blow and kneed the guy in the balls. It was predictably effective.

He was a little winded and there was blood in his hair but he was confident in calling himself the victor of that fight. Fleur-de-lys had actually stopped dancing and was watching him with an odd kind of scrutiny. They looked… Pleased. The owner and the small man at the bar were conferring amongst themselves, but the man in the suit waved Johnny over. He walked over to the bar, deliberately stepping on someone’s back as he went.

“Normally I try to discourage fighting in the club but I think I can give you pass for that one,” he said. He offered Johnny a hand. “Nino Carelli, manager.”

“Johnny.” They shook hands and Johnny sat on one of the bar stools next to Nino. Nino was gaunt, pale, and looked like he was roughly sixteen seconds away from his third heart attack. He kept reaching up to run a hand through his mousy hair in some weak attempt to keep it in order. Paired up with the owner he looked like a rat chatting up a tiger.

“Sal Ferro,” the owner said, shaking Johnny’s hand. He was tall and broad, his arms covered in dozens of tattoos, a veritable pick ’n’ mix of art. His slicked back hair and beard were both grey with age, and Johnny knew he was someone who expected respect. He was definitely someone who had been involved in organised crime his entire life and he was not someone Johnny wanted to fuck with.

“You get a lot of trouble with the Brotherhood?” Johnny said.

“Don’t even get me started,” Nino said, shaking his head.

“If we want to operate in their territory we have to put with a certain level of interference,” Sal said, although he didn’t sound happy about it.

“Yeah, but if they’re fucking with your dancers…” Johnny said.

“They just got a real hate-on for Playa,” Sal said. “But Playa can normally take care of themselves.”

“Hey, how about a drink for the hero of the hour?” Nino said. “On the house.”

“Actually, it’s on me.”

Fleur-de-lys had arrived, their number over, with the first genuine smile Johnny had seen all day. They were still in their outfit, some kind of strappy thong and thigh-high boots… No, they were more like thigh-high spats over their steel-toed boots. Around their neck they wore heavy gold chains, and there was a gun in a holster on their thigh. It didn’t look fake. They had tattoos too, although he couldn’t clearly make them out in the poor lighting. Something with wings.

“Thanks,” Johnny said, not entirely sure what to make of them. They took a beer from Sal and offered it to Johnny. It was an unnecessary chain of pass-the-parcel that led to his fingers gently brushing against theirs for just a second, a moment of contact.

“So was all that for my benefit?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Johnny said, taking a drink from the bottle. The beer was pleasantly cold. He was feeling a little smug.

“It was almost impressive.”

“Almost?”

“I’ve seen better.”

“You’re talking about yourself, aren’t you?”

“I might be.”

Fleur-de-lys took another beer from Sal, for themselves. Sal and Nino were keeping a wary eye on the two of them. He didn’t think they trusted him. He wasn’t sure he trusted them. In all honesty he wasn’t sure what to make of any of this, it wasn’t how he’d expected the evening to turn.

“This is your first time in Echo,” Fleur said.

“Obvious?”

“If you were here attacking Brotherhood every night I think I would have noticed earlier.”

“Why the fuck are they in here every night?”

Fleur shrugged, avoiding answering by taking a long drink.

“Why don’t you do something about it?” Johnny said.

Fleur laughed. “Yeah, that would be great.” The bitterness in their voice was so strong it was almost a physical presence. “You gonna help me?”

“I could,” Johnny said, although he wasn’t sure what he was promising and it didn’t strike him as a good idea to be proposing an alliance at all. But the idea of getting revenge, even if it was a terrible hypothetical suggestion, was something he couldn’t stop himself from fantasising about. He found he oddly liked the way Fleur smiled, too.

“You could,” Nino snorted. “That’s, uh, that’s a good one Johnny. Real funny.”

“We don’t need to be picking more fights with the Brotherhood,” Sal agreed. By ‘we’ he meant ‘Fleur’, that much was clear from the way Fleur’s smile collapsed into an inconvenienced frown.

“We could do with a bouncer, though,” Fleur said.

“Yeah, don’t get ahead of yourself Playa,” Sal said. “I’ll decide how my club is run.”

Fleur looked unconvinced but they didn’t argue.

“You got a name?” They said to Johnny.

“Yeah, Johnny,” he said. “Johnny Gat. You?”

“Playa works,” they said, smiling like it was a joke he wasn’t in on. “Or Boss.”


	3. Testing the Waters

“Neither of those are names,” Johnny said.

“I’m not about to take criticism from a man wearing sunglasses in a cave,” Boss said.

He tried to think of some kind of funny retort but failed, Boss grinning at his mild embarrassment. Their hand was on his knee. He didn’t actually know how he felt about that, but he didn’t feel the need to throw himself out of arm’s reach either. He finished his beer and ordered another one.

“You’re very rude for someone who expects a tip,” Johnny said.

“At least I don’t expect to be reimbursed for these drinks.”

“Do these count towards the two-drink minimum?”

“No,” Nino said.

“Guess the next round’s on me,” Johnny said.

Boss agreed, but was distracted, looking over to the door as a man entered and made his way across the scattered tables and chairs towards them.

“What the hell happened in here?” The newcomer was a small man with sleepy eyes and a permanent look of mild suspicion. He looked young, pale skin washed out in the unnatural lighting. He had a purple beanie pulled low over his head despite the heat of the club.

“Brotherhood problems,” Boss said.

“And you fought them by yourself?” The man said, impressed.

“No,” Boss said. “Johnny did.”

Impression turned to entirely unwarranted hostility and he looked at Johnny like he’d just seen someone shit on the floor. His anger implied jealous boyfriend but Boss’ casual disinterest suggested otherwise.

“I could have taken care of it,” he said weakly.

“You weren’t  _here_ ,” Boss said. “Johnny was.”

“I was at work.”

“So am I. Calm down, Carlos.”

Carlos looked at Sal and Nino but neither of them were willing to give him any kind of encouragement. Nino didn’t even meet his eye, shaking his head. Johnny drained the last of his beer. He wasn’t entirely sure what he’d gotten himself involved in but he knew it was probably time to get the hell out before things got way too intense. He was almost about to lever himself out of his seat and make good his escape before he remembered that he’d promised to buy the next round. He hesitated half a second before he settled back down. Couldn’t run out on that two drink minimum after all. There were rules for a reason.  

“Hey,” Johnny said to Sal, pulling out his wallet for the first time that night. “Get everyone a beer on me. Even the high schooler.”

Carlos turned unflatteringly red but Boss laughed and that was, in Johnny’s eyes, a victory.

* * *

He hadn’t had time to shower that morning, waking up around the time he was supposed to already be at work. The hangover had been mild and ebbed away after a few cups of strong, albeit fucking terrible coffee, but everyone else had noticed. He thought their opinions of him couldn’t have gotten any lower but the look of disgust Royce gave him when she realised he was wearing the same thing he’d been wearing yesterday had proved him wrong. He couldn’t get the stench out of his clothes either, didn’t help that he’d slept in them. He’d passed out on the couch when he’d gotten home without intending to. It had been funny to him on the drive to work but it stopped being funny the exact second he’d walked into the station. It was becoming increasingly less funny with each passing moment.

The obvious thing to do was to tell them about Echo. Echo was operating illegally on many, many levels. The entire purpose of this taskforce was shutting down illegal stripclubs. And yet Johnny was sitting at his desk staring into the middle distance not communicating with his team. Hadn’t Bradshaw criticised his ability to communicate, amongst many other things? He was sure it was something that had come up. He was dimly aware of promising himself on the drive to the club last night that he’d only been going so he could tell the others about it. He was jigging his leg so hard the desk was shaking and Guarnido sitting opposite was staring daggers through him but he couldn’t care less.

He stood up, filled with a strong need to go walkabout. He couldn’t think in this cramped little basement filled with monitor glow and harsh fluorescent lighting and people who hated him. He made his way out of the room and up the stairs, making for the break room. More coffee would clear his head, maybe. Or he’d sneak out the back and get a cigarette. He wasn’t thinking straight, he knew that much.

In the break room he headed straight for the coffee pot. It was probably already stale but he poured himself yet another mug, not convinced it was actually going to help that much. The break room was covered in cheesy anti-crime posters that Johnny couldn’t really bring himself to look at. They all appeared innocent enough but they also all had little Ultor stamps in the corners and that alone was enough to make him sick. Those fucking people. He took a sip of bad coffee.

“Pour me one.”

Johnny looked over to Chief Bradshaw, walking into the break room with his hat in his hands and a tired, drawn look on his face. Out of the corner of his eye Johnny could see someone with an Ultor stamped briefcase trotting down the stairs and he recoiled internally. The lack of subtlety in the proceedings was almost the most galling part. He poured a coffee for Bradshaw, who took it gratefully and pulled a face after taking a drink.

“Tar,” he muttered, but he thanked Johnny anyway. Johnny didn’t respond. He wondered if Bradshaw could feel the contempt burning right through his shades. The silence was not comfortable.

Johnny didn’t really  _know_ Bradshaw, not as anyone other than a boss who _clearly_ had it in for him. And the latter was enough to make him dislike the chief. There were a million other reasons he could have spun but in the end it all really came down to one thing. He felt like Bradshaw was out to get him.

“How you doing, Gat?” Bradshaw said without a trace of smugness or passive-aggressiveness. Johnny wasn’t sure he was just failing to pick up on it.

“Fine,” he said coldly. Bradshaw sighed.

“Look, I know you think the whole department hates you,” Bradshaw began.

“Yeah, people aren’t quiet about it,” Johnny said.

“But I don’t, alright? I’m not enacting some conspiracy against you, John.”

“Of course not,  _Troy_ , there’s nothing secret and conspiratorial in this station at _all_ ,” Johnny said, in a way he thought was pretty sly but made Bradshaw pull a face like Johnny had personally disappointed him in the most embarrassing way possible.

“I tried,” Bradshaw said, hand in the air like he was dismissing the entire conversation.

“Why?” Johnny muttered, but evidently not in a way that disguised what he was saying enough.

“I don’t really like the idea that a member of my team thinks I’m some kind of big bad boss who’s out to ruin his life, alright?” Bradshaw said. “Call me a people-pleaser if you want but I’m not actually fond of making people hate me.”

Johnny’s gut instinct was to tell him he thought that was pretty pathetic but he opted not to say anything. He took another drink, letting Bradshaw walk out in silence. Johnny wasn’t ready to sell himself on this open honesty thing. He’d spent enough time recently in Bradshaw’s office as the chief berated him over every decision he’d made in the last hundred years, he didn’t want extra quality time to clear the air and the very concept of having a heart-to-heart with anyone made him want to run for the goddamn hills. Because of how boring that would be, naturally. He wasn’t sure who he was trying to convince there. He still hadn’t decided what he was going to do about Echo.

He may have gotten drunk last night but his memory of events was pretty clear and he was well aware that he’d felt better in that bar talking to Boss surrounded by criminals than he had in… In some time. That was depressing. Fuck it. Fuck them. He wasn’t going to say anything. There was no evidence he’d ever been there, after all. There were a million guys called Johnny in the world, no one ever had to know. Sure, he vaguely remembered telling Boss he’d be back, but it wasn’t a promise he had to keep. The guy was just trying to drum up more business. Just let it be one stupid night. The idea of turning them in filled him with some kind of nebulous tug at his heartstrings that most people would recognise as ‘guilt’, but wasn’t something Johnny was particularly familiar with.

With the matter firmly resolved he headed back down to the dungeon to spend an eternity shifting through noise reports in case one of them was a lead. He thought of Echo’s sound proofing. The cops were underestimating them.

* * *

“You want to know why the anti-obscenity laws came about? It’s to protect the people in our society who are most vulnerable. I mean, what better reason is there? Seeing these kind of graphic sexual images have serious negative impacts on children. And- and it can be extraordinarily damaging to people’s psyche and self-esteem too. How would you feel, knowing your wife was off looking at… Looking at other men in this manner? It would make you feel bad, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s exactly right. The government has a duty to protect its citizens well-being and quality of life. They don’t want people to be unhappy, it’s bad for the country. And the  _children_. That’s really the most important point, don’t you think? The  _children_?”

“I absolutely agree. It’s all about the children. We have to put them first.”

Johnny wasn’t sure why he’d thought putting the radio on was a good idea in the first place. He turned it off, because he fucking hated the presenter’s self-congratulatory smugness. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d spent time around children he sure as hell wasn’t part of the anti-obscenity taskforce to protect  _them_ and he didn’t think anyone else on the team was either. The only thing that united the taskforce was the fact that none of them  _wanted_ to be on the taskforce. What a well-oiled machine.

It was all just one big publicity stunt.

Johnny was driving through the factories district now, but it was a sheer coincidence. He wasn’t going to avoid the entire district just to prove to himself that he absolutely wasn’t going back to the strip club. Why the hell would he want to go back, anyway? What incentive was there? He didn’t even like men…

There was a huge Brotherhood truck in the parking lot in front of the caverns. Johnny span the car left so hard he almost hit the barrier. If he’d scratched the paint of the Venom he’d never forgive himself, but this screamed bad news to him. The red and gold Atlasbreaker had a custom paintjob, the white and black ‘tribal’ patterns associated with the Brotherhood running across the roof and doors. The custom license plate said MAERO. Alarm bells screamed in Johnny’s head. He’d beaten the shit out of a whole mob of Brotherhood the night before and now the leader, the  _leader_ of the Brotherhood was here.

Johnny leapt out of the car and barged through the door into the gift shop. He charged down the stairs, feet crashing on the metal steps loud enough for the sound to ring out through the empty corridors. Or not completely empty, a couple of extremely nervous looking women flinching when he raced past them. They were probably actually on a tour of the caverns, which were open for another good half hour. It was kind of early in the day to be visiting a club. But this was an emergency, after all.

The journey through the caverns felt less treacherous now that he knew where he was going. None of that earlier trepidation as he ran through the caverns, feet almost slipping on the wet rock, racing through to the entrance. There was an oddly out of place stack of rocks half-covering the tunnel that led to the door but Johnny slid past them, pushing through to see the white door. Pushing it open, he walked into a well-lit and relatively quiet room. There was certainly no massacre occurring indoors.

The club was different with the lights on, losing that strangely dream-like quality it had when it was open. It was primarily purple and dark, rich coloured wood, and some glitter clung stubbornly to the gaps between the floorboards. There was a guy in a T-shirt and sweatpants practicing his routine on the mainstage, another man giving him advice. There were a couple of others talking in the corner. He didn’t see Boss. He did see Maero.

Maero was huge, but he’d known that. Huge and dressed in red, entire body and face covered in inter-weaving red and black tribal tattoos. Heavy on the gold jewellery, hair chopped into some unfortunate mullet. He was looming over Sal, who was cleaning a glass with the kind of nonchalance you wouldn’t expect from someone being stared down by the most feared and powerful gang leader in the city.

“It’s contributing to what we’ll call… A general feeling of discontent,” Maero said. Sal raised an eyebrow.

“I think all that Ultor executive talk is gettin’ to you Maero,” Sal said. “You’re starting to spew a lotta bullshit too. You might as well cut to the chase. I’m not going to sue you for saying the wrong thing.”

“If my boys keep getting the shit beaten out of them every time they come here they’re going to get harder to control,” Maero said. “They do what I say but they’re not robots, Sal. I can’t stop them doing what they want all the time.”

“They don’t  _keep_ getting the shit kicked outta them,” Sal said. “It was one time. They’re getting handsy with my staff. People don’t appreciate that.”

“Look, you know as well as I do what the real issue is. If you just got rid of them then-”

“And you know it ain’t happening. For fuck’s sake, what harm are they doing? They’re just a dancer.”

“They’re not just a dancer.”

“How about you just remind your old lady who’s actually running the gang for once, yeah?”

“Y’know, I liked you better before you hired them.”

“I liked you better when you were single.”

Sal looked over then, seeing Johnny loitering in the middle of the room like the most conspicuous cop in the world. He frowned.

“Johnny, fuck are you doing here? We don’t open for another forty-five minutes, buddy.” Sal’s expression flickered to a kind of suspicious curiosity, like he was testing waters when he couldn’t see the bottom. “Fleur-de-lys is here.”

“I just saw the Brotherhood truck,” Johnny said slowly, not taking his eyes off the back of Maero’s head. “Was wondering if everything was alright.”

Maero looked to him, confused and a little offended, clearly. He was getting used to respect. He probably didn’t like the idea someone was willing to challenge him. Johnny felt a bubble of excitement forming in his chest and he found it hard to not crack a smile. Or bear his teeth, perhaps.

“I didn’t realise you’d hired a bodyguard,” Maero said.

“I didn’t,” Sal said, without room for argument or accusation. It was clear, if Johnny were to stand up to Maero, he would be doing it alone. He was almost annoyed. He felt he deserved the back-up. Wasn’t he doing this on their behalf?

Maero stayed relaxed. His pose was non-confrontational, his face calm. He wasn’t picking a fight. Johnny had fists balled, muscles tense, but Maero just wasn’t biting. He was looking at Johnny with mild amusement rather than an eagerness to enact grievous bodily harm. Johnny had expected more from him.

“I’ll be seeing you Sal,” Maero said, looking away from Johnny and to Sal in a manner that was entirely unafraid and unconcerned. The adrenaline sizzled out of Johnny like ice water being thrown on a dying flame.

“Yeah, hopefully not too soon,” Sal said, only half joking. Maero waved a hand and walked out of the club, straight past Johnny like he wasn’t even there. He watched Maero walk away in forced tension, as though he was concerned the big man was going to suddenly snap and turn on them in the time it took the soundproofed door to slam shut.

He did not.

Johnny slouched as he walked to the bar, Sal staring at him with something that could probably best be described as contemptuous. He wasn’t sure why he wasn’t getting the hero treatment anymore. He’d just been trying to help out, same as last night. He sat on one of the stools at the bar.

“If you pick a fight with Maero,” Sal said, with a tone that suggested very, very dangerous things. “I’ll have Fleur-de-lys pay you a personal visit.”

“Really?” Johnny said, wanting to not take him seriously.

“There’s a reason we don’t need to have security here,” Sal said, and Johnny stopped trying to make it into a joke, because absolutely nothing about Sal suggested he would receive that well.

“You don’t mind Maero running this club, then?”

“Maero is an old friend,” Sal said. “And I don’t know you, kid.”

Johnny could respect that. He gave Sal a quick nod of understanding and it seemed to work, Sal returning to setting up the bar and letting Johnny sit there without complaint. Johnny was wondering if it was too early to order a beer when Carlos blew into the room and made a beeline for him like a storm cloud with a personal agenda.

“The fuck are you doing here?” Carlos said.

“Fuck are you?” Johnny said.

“I’m here with the Boss. You don’t work here,” Carlos said.

“Neither do you,” Johnny said.

“Hey boys, there’s no point in fighting over Fleur.” The man who’d been coaching at the pole had decided to insert himself into their conversation, putting a hand on either shoulder like he knew them and wasn’t some complete stranger with too many tattoos of the local shitty football team. “After all, it’s only $25 for a date, right Carlos?”

He winked at Carlos, who did not smile back, looking intensely resentful instead. Johnny looked at the intruder with visible disgust. Average height, slim but athletic, long narrow face and short blond hair. Smiling like a TV show host. Talked like he thought he was funny. Visibly had glitter ingrained into his skin.

“And you are?” Johnny said.

“Ribs,” the man grinned. “I’m the announcer.”

“You’re a fuckin’ loudmouth,” Johnny snapped. Carlos actually laughed.

“Yeah,” Ribs said. “It’s my job. I’m just trying to do you guys a solid here, ease up some of this tension. No reason we can’t all be friends down here in the pits, right?”

“Ribs, shut the fuck up.” Boss broke into the conversation when they entered the room, but they were thrown when they saw Johnny. Obviously pleased but confused, the anger that had been written over their face shattering. They were almost a little embarrassed by their entrance.

“Hey,” Johnny said.

“What are you doing here?” Boss said.

“He thinks he’s our guard dog,” Sal said. “He’s going to chase off all the Brotherhood for us like a nice little pitbull.”

“You’re picking a fight with Maero now?” Boss said.

“Yeah, we’re going to have a showdown in Ultor Stadium,” Johnny said.

In the light he could see Boss’ tattoos clearly for the first time. There was a fleur-de-lys on their right shoulder, a winged S on their left. Both had ribbons, the same name written. The Saints. The Third Street Saints. That was a fucking blast from the past. You didn’t see a lot of Saints tattoos around these days. It had been a long time since they’d even remotely been contenders. Well over six or seven years since anyone had last heard from them. Johnny had been fighting the Saints back in the day but he still felt oddly sorry for Boss. The Saints really had fallen apart in the most dull way. They’d just failed and that couldn’t be any easy thing to move on from-

As soon as he thought it he realised they hadn’t. Fleur-de-lys. The tattoos. The purple in their costume. They were  _still_ a Saint. And  _Carlos_. If he’d been questioning what the hell was going on with them before he understood now. They were the only survivors.

“What?” Boss asked. He realised he’d been staring at their arms for a little too long.

“Admiring your ink,” Johnny said. Boss made a noncommittal grunt and sat on the stool beside him, slouching at the bar. They were working their way up to say something and that made him nervous. The mere  _idea_ of a heart-felt confession made Johnny’s own heart clench in fear. He had to change the subject.

“How long have you worked here?” He said.

“Couple of years almost.”

“You like it?”

Boss grinned slyly and he coughed uncomfortably.

“I just meant…”

“Yeah. I do. I love dancing.” They spoke with surprising seriousness. They _loved_ dancing. It was almost strange that they were so bad at it. No, bad wasn’t really the right word, because they were  _impressive_ , just not… Sexual. Or sexy.

Carlos was sitting on Boss’ other side looking mildly distressed for reasons Johnny couldn’t even begin to comprehend. Forget anything he’d said about understanding the kid. He absolutely did not.

“You’ve found your calling then,” Johnny joked gently. Boss laughed and Carlos looked distraught.

“Yeah,” Boss said. “Sure have.”

“How’d you even get involved in something like this?”

“I didn’t have anything else to do. How did you find out about it?”

“This girl, Minx…”

“Of course,” Boss nodded to Sal. “See, the Minxes are a good idea.”

“Yeah, sure,” Sal said. “Until of them invites the wrong person down here and the place ends up crawling with fuckin’ cops. I didn’t spend this much time building Echo out of nothing to take this kind of risk.”

“It’s worked out for us so far,” Boss said.

“I’m sure Nino will be delighted to hear you approve of his marketing strategies. Netting you  _another_ lap-dog to tail you everywhere was priority number one,” Sal said. “We’re opening in like an hour Playa, you gonna get ready or spend all shift flirting for free?”

Boss rolled their eyes, getting up off the stool, but their annoyance wasn’t sincere.

“You going to hang around?” They said to Johnny.

“Yeah,” he said, “might as well.”

They grinned, walking off towards backstage. There were others milling about now, some in full costume already, waiting for customers to start arriving. The speakers spat out a sharp burst of shrill static as they turned on, murmurs of complaint running around the room. ‘ _Ribs_ ’ and ‘ _Every fucking night_ ’. For the most part people weren’t paying much attention to him or Carlos, but a couple of guys in the corner were giving them both the eye, clearly engaged in some kind of bitter gossip.

“-How many groupies do they  _need_.”

“I don’t feel safe with just  _them_ here, I don’t need their cronies too. I mean look at that guy, he looks like a  _thug_.”

“I bet he’s another gangster too. I know Robby and Marco used to be in the Rollerz or whatever but they’re ok… But all the Saints are fucking  _psychos_ …”

Johnny had an urge to say something but he didn’t think throwing down with the strippers was going to get him the same kind of praise as fighting Brotherhood. He looked at Carlos, who was pretending to ignore the men gossiping with the kind of intensity that suggested he was listening to every word and burning inside. He glanced up at Johnny and then away, like the eye contact alone would trigger some kind of violent response. Johnny hesitated for a second.

“Look,” he said. “I think we… Got off on the wrong foot.”

It was an olive branch. It was wilting and Johnny was limply dangling it at arm’s length like it was dirty but it was still an olive branch. He was making an  _attempt_.

“Maybe,” Carlos said, with so much caution it sounded like he wasn’t convinced that Johnny wasn’t about to beat him with the branch.

“I’m not trying to…” Johnny had no idea what the hell he was or wasn’t trying to do. “Look, I just ended up here, alright? Fuck if I know what’s going on.”

“Yeah,” Carlos almost smiled. “Me too.”

“How come you’re here, man? You just hang out here all the time?”

“Someone’s gotta keep an eye out for the Boss. Not that they can’t look out for themselves.”

“I keep hearing that.”

“Yeah,  _believe_ it. They may just be a stripper now but don’t fuck with them.”

That opened up more questions than it answered. Johnny hadn’t checked how deep the river ran before he had waded in, and he hadn’t looked to see where it led.


	4. Anger Management

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For interested parties; I have a new GatBoss one-shot fic up! [Saint of all Saints](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3759484). Read it if you like wounded Johnny having religious delusions about the Boss (I know I do).

It was four o’clock in the morning and Johnny was finally going home. The night sky was heavy with clouds over his head, thick blackness that ran out over the river, the horizon becoming lost in the dark. Rain was beginning to splatter down, soft wet drops threatening to seep through Johnny’s jacket. Faint yellow light from the flickering street lights highlighted shattered glass spread across the parking lot, twinkling in the darkness. The glass trailed back to an old Danville, which had been brutally slaughtered. A garbage can had been thrown through the dashboard, every window was shattered, the radio had been torn out. The front doors had been caved in, at least two of the tires had been shredded. The unnatural light washed the colour out but Johnny could tell it was purple. He stood for a few seconds, twirling his car keys around his finger. He heard the door to the giftshop open and close behind him, he could make out Boss’ figure in the reflection in his glasses.

“Is that your car?” He said, pointing to the Danville.

Boss looked up from the gym bag on their shoulder, where they’d been presumably been trying to find their car keys. They seemed surprised he had been waiting for him but when they looked to the car their expression soured. They groaned, dragging their hands over their face in frustration.

“Fucking  _Brotherhood_ ,” they sighed. Their response, to Johnny, seemed unbelievably good-tempered. If it had been his car he’d have gone apocalyptic.

“You gonna need a ride?” Johnny said.

“Yeah,” they said. “I don’t think  _that’s_ going anywhere.”

“What are you going to do?” He asked as they walked to his car. “Is it worth fixing? It’s a  _Danville_ …”

Boss laughed. “I’ll get Carlos to steal me another one.”

Carlos had bailed from the club at about midnight, citing work as his reason for leaving, throwing Johnny a filthy look when he stayed. Johnny hadn’t felt the need to get home, work or not. Apparently Carlos felt his job was more important than an officer of the law did.

“Get him to steal you a ride that isn’t so  _shitty_.”

“Yeah… Fuck, is this a Venom? A real Venom?”

Boss looked in awe of Johnny’s car as they hovered by the driver’s door. He waited by them, wanting to get in, but they didn’t make a move.

“This is an American car, the passenger seat’s on the right,” Johnny said. Boss looked meaningfully at his car keys. “You are  _not_ driving.”

“You had a beer earlier,” they said.

“I had  _one_ beer four and a half hours ago.”

“I always drive.”

“You don’t always drive my fuckin’ car.”

“ _Johnny_.”

“You wanna walk?”

Boss walked to the passenger door, pulling it open resentfully. As soon as he started up the engine they were fiddling with the radio, with apparently no regard for proper in-car manners. He didn’t complain. He drove to the edge of the lot.

“Where do you live?”

“Red Light district.”

“Should have guessed.”

“Fuck you.”

He laughed. They were grinning at him, face half in the darkness leaking in from outside, exaggerated shadows around their eyes making them look profoundly tired. As he drove, the streetlights flashed over the chains they still wore around their neck, highlighting the edges of the engraved fleur-de-lys on their pendant. The edge of the pendant was clipped, molded slightly out of shape where a bullet had cut past.

Saint’s Row was still throwing light up into the sky, the constant alive advertisements lighting up the whole district, ensuring night never fully penetrated. The contrast between Saint’s Row and the untouched Red Light neighbourhoods seemed even more stark with Shivington flanking them. Rebadeaux, Bavogian Plaza and Prawn Court were safe for now, but unless someone could stop Ultor’s march of progress Christ knows how long for. That’d be Boss out on their ear. They wouldn’t be able to afford any of Ultor’s shiny new apartments or townhouses. Not to mention a hundred others.

“I’m in Prawn Court,” they said. “Just- yeah, that house.”

“You got the whole house?”

“No, just the basement. I got this parking space, you can stop here.”

Boss hopped out of the car, jumping over the side with ease. They waited on the curb behind the car, watching him. They raised their eyebrows.

“You coming?”

He hadn’t realised he was being invited in. He left the car in Boss’ space and followed them down the stairs into the basement flat. When they opened the door and turned on the light he was not exactly floored by the elegance of the place.

It was a hole. It was tiny, for a start, the whole thing was one box room. There was a mattress in one corner, a TV in the other, and a cramped kitchenette next to the door. There was some kind of boiler taking up most of the back wall, rusted pipes spider-webbing across the room, quietly and not-so-quietly humming and gurgling to themselves. Boxes were stacked up to one side, half Boss’ belongings still in storage thanks to the limited space. No bathroom, or shower, there must have been a shared one in the main house. Plaster- where there was any- was peeling off the walls in chunks. It definitely had dry rot.

Boss dumped their bag on the floor, walking to the fridge. They tossed Johnny a can of beer and he missed it, knocking it to the side with his hand, where it went flying off and hit a wall. Boss cracked up laughing as he scrambled to grab it.

“That’s not funny,” he said.

“I thought it was hilarious.”

There was only one chair but he sat in it because he didn’t know where else to- and he wasn’t sitting on that fucking mattress. It looked diseased. Boss didn’t seem to care about him taking the only chair, hopping up onto one of the counter tops instead, leaning forward to not crash their head into one of the cupboards. The doorway was a void between them but he was somehow glad of the space. Boss wasn’t exactly touchy-feely but he was growing unreasonably uncomfortable with how close the two of them got sometimes; like he was starting to hate how _comfortable_ he  _did_ feel with them.

“What do you do?” Boss said.

“Huh?”

“You have a job or you just hang around strip clubs all day?”

“That is my job. I’m a strip club critic.”

“We getting a good review?”

“Never been to a club where the strippers buy  _me_ drinks before. 10/10 for that.”

“Yeah most strippers got more fuckin’ sense.”

“I know.”

Boss shook their head, snorting with laughter. Their resting face was so stern that every time they smiled was like a small transformation. Every time they laughed he got a feeling of victory. He was smiling at them, too. When they moved to get another beer he darted forward, turned on the television. Boss frowned in confusion, but said nothing, taking a long drink and leaning back against the counter instead.

Commercials flickered past in rapid-fire, but Johnny was barely paying any form of attention. It was just something else to look at, another thing to think about. He needed the constant little distractions when he was around Boss. He didn’t like the way they absorbed all his focus. He hated the way they stuck in his head. What the fuck was he even thinking about? Clearly he was more tired than he had realised, because he had stopped making sense even to himself. He rubbed his eyes sleepily, and when he opened them again a trailer for a talk show was playing. Aisha was sitting on the couch. She tossed her head back and laughed, joking with the host and the other guests, a whole screen full of smiling faces with her at the centre of their universe.

Seeing her was so much worse than just hearing about her. She looked so happy and vibrant that the wave of resentment it triggered was so powerful it tore right through every good feeling he’d had over the last few days and left him stranded in his own spiteful hatred once more. It was almost like outrage, that she would  _dare_ to be so successful and beautiful  _without_ him. He knew that it was just a television interview, that she was made-up and spouting lines carefully chosen for her by her PR team, but it felt like a personal blow. There was so much anger boiling inside him that it was hard to believe she’d ever made him happy at all.

He slammed his hand against the off button, needing to make her go, make her leave. He couldn’t look at her. He didn’t want to say it, but it hurt, it hurt like staring directly into the fucking sun.

“Hey man you might not like her music, but don’t take it out on my TV,” Boss said.

When Johnny didn’t laugh they looked a little disquieted. He turned the TV back on but flicked rapidly through the channels, searching for something else to watch. Anything else. He wanted to do a lot more than just turn a TV off. He wanted to smash the fucking thing. He wanted to tear one of the pipes out of Boss’ wall and beat the television into a carcass of glass shards and plastic. He hadn’t even realised how tense his entire body was until the plastic of the remote started to creak as it neared snapping point. Boss quietly walked over and pulled the remote from his grip.

“This is about more than music, I’m guessing,” they said.

“She’s my ex,” he said.

“You’re fucking with me.”

“No.” Johnny shook his head. “It’s fuckin’ whatever, man. Forget it. Women, right?”

Forced laughter was putting it lightly. The sense of discomfort settling into the room was palpable. Boss kept flicking through the channels before coming to a halt and groaning audibly. Dane Vogel’s smug blond head flooded the screen. Boss turned the sound on, as if the bastard was going to have anything worth listening to.

“Ultor’s definitely done a great service to the people of Stilwater, but would I say it was all thanks to me? No, of course I wouldn’t. But I wouldn’t have anyone fired for saying it, either!”

The audience laughed so hard Johnny wondered if they had guns to their heads.

“Working on Sunnyvale Gardens really is an amazing opportunity. We at Ultor are proud to be breathing life back into a wilting community and revitalising what was once a beautiful part of the city. Since rebuilding Shivington we’ve experienced a massive drop in organised crime in Stilwater and a huge decrease in gang related violence–”

“That  _fucker_ ,” Boss spat. “Playing it off like he isn’t  _personally_ lining the pockets of the Brotherhood.”

“–And as we look to the future together, we can truly say it does look brighter. A better life for all of us is on the horizon–”

“Ruined my fucking life,” Boss said. “I should be demanding fucking reparations!”

“In blood,” Johnny said.

“Damn right in fucking blood!” Boss shouted. They drained the last of their beer can and whipped it at the television with enough force for it to rebound and smack Johnny in the chest. “I should toss that cunt out of his own skyscraper! I should burn him alive! I should fucking–”

They cut themselves short, their anger slipping away from them as quickly as it had ignited. It was like they crumpled in on themselves, the force of their threats draining all the energy they had to give. Johnny watched them shrink away from the danger of making promises they knew they couldn’t keep and instead turn back to the safety of harsh reality. They tried grinning, like it had all been a joke, but they couldn’t even convince themselves, let alone Johnny. He played along regardless, letting out a short burst of staccato laughter that he regretted immediately. Boss sat down on the bed, leaning back a little, looking up at him.

“This isn’t how the evening played out in my head,” they said huskily.

“What did you think was going to happen?” Johnny laughed.

“It’s late,” Boss said, suddenly, their tone clipped. They weren’t laughing and he wasn’t entirely sure where he’d gone wrong.

“I guess I should go,” Johnny said, standing slowly. He almost wanted Boss to change their mind and tell him he could stay if he wanted, they could keep hanging out. The idea of being home was strangely repulsive. The understanding that he was lonely was beginning to form in the back of his mind. It wasn’t a theory he was willing to fully accept or admit, but he wasn’t going to be able to keep denying it to himself for much longer.

“Yeah,” Boss said. They weren’t looking at him, biting back on their words. Both of them in that moment were left feeling at a complete loss; both knowing they were failing to communicate and neither knowing how exactly to approach this issue.

Johnny decided the best way to handle the problem was to leave.

“I’ll see you,” Johnny said. And then he left, walking up the steps from Boss’ apartment, out onto the street. The rain had gotten worse and by the time he reached his car, he was soaked through.

* * *

He wasn’t hung over the next morning, but it didn’t stop the others from thinking he was. Sleep-deprived Johnny Gat and hungover Johnny Gat were very similar, apparently. Similar enough for Detective Dawson to start spreading a rumour he was an alcoholic. He began formulating a plan to try and punch Dawson in the face and get away with it. Most of the plans he came up with consisted of punching him and then running away very quickly, and he wasn’t convinced they were going to work out in his favour particularly. At least partially because he wasn’t convinced he had the self-control to run from a fight.

Regardless, he was aware he wasn’t going to be able to keep coming into work like this and getting away with it. He was going to get in trouble fast and that was the last thing he needed. After the weekend he’d come in on Monday ready for a good day’s work and that would show them all… As soon as the thought of getting one over on his co-workers entered his head he was forced to glumly resign himself to the fact that it didn’t really matter what he did. They were going to hate him. He could have come back from his suspension ready to be the world’s best cop and they still would have hated him. Life, Johnny decided, was unfair.

It wasn’t like he hadn’t messed up. Even he was aware of that, something he admitted through gritted teeth but understood well enough. But he was getting tired of paying for it. It wasn’t like the whole thing was entirely his fault- and it had all been months ago. People needed to  _let go._

The hypocrisy of that thought did not escape Johnny.

Commotion upstairs alerted him to the idea something interesting might be happening and he was out of his chair and up the stairs to the foyer in seconds. Bradshaw was arguing with Deputy Chief Forester, who was trailing him from the front door and towards the stairs to his office, clutching Troy’s jacket in his hands.

“Troy, you need to go to the  _hospital_ ,” Forester insisted. “You need medical attention.”

“I got clipped,” Troy said. “I’m  _barely_ bleeding. I got a first aid kit in my office.”

He had rolled up the sleeve of his shirt, pressing what looked like a wad of napkins onto  his upper arm. The napkins were already soaked through, the flimsy paper an inefficient method of stemming the blood flow.

“You going to stitch yourself up?” Forester said. “Because I am not getting involved in this  _lunacy_ , this is a violation of–”

“Gat,” Troy said, noticing him loitering in the hallway. “You know your way round a bullet wound?”

“Yeah,” Johnny said.

“Then I guess I don’t need your help at all, Gus. C’mon Gat.”

Johnny followed Bradshaw up the stairs, walking past the incandescent Deputy Chief. He could barely contain a smirk, suddenly inflated with a feeling of absolute superiority. Johnny Gat 1, Stilwater PD… 500, most likely. One victory was not enough to even the scoreboard.

In his office Troy grabbed the first aid kit and peeled the napkins off his arm with a grimace, dropping them in the trashcan like they didn’t count as hazardous waste. The wound wasn’t particularly deep, but the edges of it looked red-raw against the black and white of Troy’s tattoo. Johnny hadn’t known he had tattoos. The fleur-de-lys of the Third Street Saints forever branded into him. Johnny found it hard not to stare. He’d forgotten, somehow, the years his chief had spent in the now defunct gang. The defunct gang that Johnny was starting to meet more and more members of lately.

“This is only gonna need butterfly stitches,” Johnny said.

“Yeah I figured. Good thing too,” Troy said. “No offence John, but I don’t know if I trust you to be stabbing me.”

“Then why get me to help?”

“You were standing there. And I knew it would piss Gus off more.”

Johnny snorted with laughter. He pulled the butterfly stitches from the first aid kit, unwrapping the first and beginning to apply them to the cut. Troy tried to appear unbothered but conspicuously swallowed and looked away as Johnny pinched the sides of his cut together. He pulled a cigarette from his shirt pocket, ignoring the ‘No Smoking’ sign on the wall of his office.

“What were the Saints like?” Johnny asked. Troy looked a little taken aback.

“Violent,” he said, carefully.

“You were with them for years, weren’t you?” Johnny said.

“Yes.”

“So what were they  _like_?”

Troy shook his head, but he wasn’t angry. Johnny couldn’t really tell what he was thinking, the Chief staring off into the distance with an unreadable expression. Straight-faced, but deliberately so. Measured.

“They were my friends, some of them,” Troy said. “Good friends. It may surprise you, but they weren’t actually cop-slaughtering maniacs, whatever they said on WMD KBOOM. They were… They were a gang. They were criminals. They were violent criminals, and it’s good they’ve been disbanded. Hopefully the downfall of the Third Street Saints is a sign that we will be able to rid Stilwater of gang-related criminal activities.”

The rehashed television-friendly speech sounded laughably false. Johnny looked up from Troy’s open wound, fixing him with a coldly disbelieving stare. Troy’s own face was rigid, staring Johnny back down.

“You don’t believe any of that,” Johnny said.

“I don’t want any more gangs in Stilwater,” Troy said.

“Yeah, maybe, but you’re not glad the Saints are gone at all, are you?”

“I don’t think this is really an appropriate way for you to be speaking to a superior officer.” Still, no anger. It was more like a sigh than a command.

“Probably not,” Johnny said.

He was tempted to ask if Troy knew someone called Boss, but even he wasn’t that ludicrously obvious in his bluntness. Besides, Johnny knew well enough that Boss hadn’t been the leader of the Saints– that had been… What was his name? Julius something? Whoever he was, he had been found dead years ago– and there was no guarantee that Troy had ever heard of them, whatever they’d been called back then.

“Are you done?” Troy said.

“Yo, don’t rush me,” Johnny said. “You want this to reopen?”

“I guess not.” He hesitated. “Thanks, John.”

“Johnny.”

“Alright.”

Troy nodded, smiled. Johnny finished patching up his arm, left with a feeling of begrudging respect and dwindling hatred. Maybe having a boss who didn’t hate your guts wasn’t such a bad thing. It would be nice to have someone in his corner, for once.


	5. Damsel in Distress

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if anyone's interested, i have a one-shot called Saint of all Saints up y'all should check out! It's Boss/Gat too! Everything I write is Boss/Gat.
> 
> Also if you aren't keeping up with my partner in crime [Tupu's](http://viinkumakkara.tumblr.com) tumblr then you're missing out on some killer art guys!

Johnny was not an introspective person. It wasn’t in his nature to question his own actions or motivations. So when his first thought upon waking up at 3 in the afternoon was if Boss would be able to get into work that morning, he didn’t worry that much about why. He decided to head over there and ask if they wanted a ride to work. If anything, his primary concern was why he hadn’t asked for their number yet, because this was really inconvenient. He didn’t want to have to go to their place or Echo every time he wanted to see them. Any part of himself that begged the question of _why_ , that tried to force himself to confront his own loneliness he wrote off as boredom. Spending time with Boss was better than doing nothing on his own all day. Or, God forbid, catching up on paperwork.

He was stopped when driving to Red Light by a cop car blocking the road. A group of officers were dragging a couple of Samedi into the back of the car. He felt a burst of directionless envy, triggered both because the officers were actually _doing their job_ and because someone else was taking action, any kind of action, against these awful fucking gangs. The Samedi may have been the least of them but they still needed to be taken down. But then again, if you ripped the last of the Samedi’s dying roots from the earth, there was nothing left in the way of the Brotherhood. They’d be able to burn right on through the city and raze it to the ground. Maybe that was worse.

Apparently the shitty soundproofing in Boss’ apartment didn’t just let all sound in, it let all the sound _out_. Johnny found this out as he stood frozen with his fist an inch away from the door like a six foot two doorknocker, listening to the raised voices spilling out onto the stairwell.

            “Yeah I can get you another car. No problem. Or here’s an idea, why don’t you do it _yourself_?”

            “Why would I need to do it when I can just get you do it for me?”

            “I don’t know, because it’s what you’re _supposed_ to do?”

            “What the fuck are you talking about Carlos?”

            “When was the last time you did anything for yourself? When are you going to start acting like the _boss_ again?”

            “I am the Boss.”

            “Yeah. Or at least you _used_ to be.”

            “Fuck you say?”

            “You don’t do _anything_. You don’t _lead_ anything. I didn’t join the Saints-- don’t walk away!”

            “I don’t want to listen to this.”

            “No, of course you don’t. You never do.”

            “ _Fuck_ you.”

            “I didn’t join the Saints, my brother didn’t _die_ for the Saints, so you could be a fucking _stripper_ in some shithole! Brotherhood destroyed your car, so why aren’t they _dead_? What’s it going to take? I don’t know what _happened_ to you. You used to be--”

            “You don’t know _shit_ about what I used to be.”

            “I know you wouldn’t have put up with this crap. People just walk all over you and that’s fine? You’re fine with that? You had to get yourself a new attack dog just to deal with a couple of guys. What happened to handling things by yourself?”

            “You need to consider shutting the fuck up before--”

            Johnny’s fist hit the door with a bang that cut Boss short. There was a pause before he could hear a key scraping in the lock and the door came swinging open. Boss was tired, confused, but their anger froze over when they saw him, their face taking on a dangerous stillness. Carlos, on the other hand, swelled into comical incendiary outrage, his face so visibly radiating disgust that it was hard for Johnny not to laugh. He’d thought they’d made peace, but that was all too clearly not the case. Boss’ anger was more confusing, but he’d just about given up on understanding anything they did.

            “What the hell’s going on?” Johnny asked.

            “None of your business,” Carlos said. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

            “I just wanted to see if Boss needed a ride to work,” Johnny said.

            “We’ve got it under control, thanks,” Carlos said. “How do you even know where the Boss lives?”

            “I was here Thursday night.” Johnny looked at Boss, who nodded in agreement.

            “You were--” Carlos didn’t even finish the sentence, coming to his own conclusion.

            “Yeah, I gave Boss a lift and then we had a couple of beers, what’s it to you?” Johnny said. “Should we have asked for your fuckin’ _permission_? What the fuck’s your problem? Why are you giving Boss so much shit?”

            “I’ll tell you why I’m giving the Boss shit,” Carlos said. “It’s because I’m the only one who doesn’t think this is _enough_! Saints used to own this city! They used to own this city because of _you_. But now you haven’t got the balls to even fucking _try_.”      

            The ice covering Boss’ anger creaked, lip curling in a more savage kind of rage, but it held fast and contained the flow. They didn’t really have an answer for Carlos, no long wheedling self-defence, no pleading for his understanding. Just a silence so cold and so bitter it could crush the air in your lungs. Just Carlos waiting in thirsty anticipation for any kind of response and getting nothing but the dry heat of his own anger.

            Johnny had been a cop when the Saints had been in full force. He could remember those days well enough, days when the station was so in bed with the Vice Kings they could barely move without Ben King’s express permission. Fuck knows what had happened to him, the Vice Kings had been yet another casualty in the Saints’ campaign for total dominance of Stilwater. But for the most part it had been hunting season for the Saints. Johnny had done his fair share when it came to making arrests. Until the Saints reach had begun to outweigh everyone else’s, of course, and then it just felt like switching the station’s team colours from yellow to purple. Not that that had lasted. They were gone as quickly as they’d appeared. The Saints wiped themselves out overnight, blaze of glory over so fast that those few months seemed distinctly surreal. Like no one could really believe that it had happened. No single group could decimate an entire city like that, not _really_.

            But the seven years since the Saints had fallen hadn’t faded the memories of the last two believers. Or maybe it was just one now. Maybe it was just Carlos alone. His desperation made sense. It was the Boss’ cold refusal that didn’t add up, in Johnny’s mind.

            “Why don’t you want to restart the Saints?” Johnny said.

            Carlos nodded in agreement but Boss shook their head. They hadn’t been expected to be asked at all, and they didn’t really have an answer.

            “I will,” they said, without conviction.

            “Then why the fuck don’t you?!” Carlos said.

            Boss didn’t say anything at all. They were still and quiet but it lacked the danger of barely concealed rage. It was a darker form of quiet, a sadder kind of quiet. Almost an admission in itself. They looked at Johnny and he wasn’t really sure what they were going to say, if there was anything they _could_ say, other than opening up a vein of raw honesty neither of them wanted to deal with.

            “Can you give me that ride to Echo?” They said.

            “Yeah,” he said. And he found himself feeling grateful.

            The Venom was only a two-seater so Carlos wouldn’t have been able to join them if he wanted to, but he clearly didn’t. He stalked out of Boss’ apartment and to his own pickup truck without bothering to try and continue the argument. It was an all-around defeat. No winners here.

Conversation was dead at first, the two of them sitting in the uncomfortable silence of people desperately trying to think of a topic of conversation. It ended when a car careening down the wrong side of the road came perilously close to crashing straight into the Venom. Johnny managed to steer the car out of the way at the last second, spitting violent insults as he tried to right the car again.

"That was nice," Boss said, grinning wolfishly.

"People round here drive like fucking assholes!" Johnny said. "Should back up and hit him again."

"Do it," Boss said.

A cop car screamed past them as it raced down the road, presumably in pursuit of the other driver. Boss sneered a little, their eyes narrowed in distaste.

"Fucking cops," Johnny said, a little experimentally. Boss grunted in agreement but didn't seem to give the comment that much thought. It was probably better that way. He thought for a moment. "How come Echo's never got busted?"

"Sal's too good to let that happen," Boss said. "He knows what he's doing. It helps that the Brotherhood are protecting us. And it helps that there are a choice few Ultor execs who are big fans."

"Of yours?"

"Who isn't?"

“You’re the headline act, then.”

            “Fuck yeah.”

            He didn’t add that he thought Boss’ act was the least sexual striptease he’d ever seen. It didn’t feel necessary.

            “Why did you become a stripper?” He asked.

            “I like dancing,” Boss said, shrugging. “I just wanted to keep doing something I enjoyed.”

            “Risky.”

            “I don’t care. Fuck else was I going to do? Get a job in some office? Run away? Work for Ultor? Sell out? At least I’m not…”

            Boss didn’t really know what they weren’t. Or if they did it wasn’t something they could verbalise. They clearly felt like they hadn’t done themselves wrong, at the very least. Johnny didn’t push them. Them telling him anything at all felt strange, but he was adjusting to it. Not that he was planning to open up himself. But it wasn’t really the same, he decided. He had real things to hide.

            At the caverns Johnny didn’t hesitate in following Boss down. He had no reason to be there, but the idea of being with some people who knew him and didn’t actively hate him was pretty appealing. And if Boss vouched for him then he was golden, right? Like a key to the kingdom.

            The entrance to Echo was blocked off when they got there. For a moment Johnny didn’t know where the hell it had gone or if they were looking at the wrong damn wall but Boss set about moving the rocks obscuring the tunnel that led to the door. In all honesty it looked like it was a pain in the ass to have to handle every damn time but it was safety over convenience. Better to not get caught than to get lazy. Although in an ideal world you could be both, Johnny reasoned.

            He liked the club when it wasn’t open. Somehow the starkness of the place under normal lighting and the emptiness of it all was strangely alien. It was a bit like being in a theatre long after the curtain call, although admittedly Johnny didn't know many theatres where the main stage had a pole and was very definitely penis-shaped. Not that he knew many theatres at all, for that matter. They weren't much for the performing arts in Stilwater. Not that kind of performance at least.

There was a man next to the stage holding an enormous snake. Boss sighed and muttered something under their breath but their annoyance was not shared by the man with the giant python looped around his neck. He walked over to them beaming like he was greeting an old friend. He was broad-shouldered, square jawed and handsome, in a ruggedly manly way. He shook Johnny's hand, still smiling.

"You must be Fleur's new bodyguard," he joked. "It's good of you to keep those Brotherhood of their back. I'm Snake."

"Johnny. What's with the snake?"

"Oh this is Annabelle! She's part of my act. Don't worry, she's completely harmless." Snake rubbed an affection thumb over Annabelle's head. "You can hold her if you like."

"Yeah I am... Good." Johnny didn't know a lot about snakes and couldn't remember if they were or were not slimy and disgusting but he wasn't going to find out.

"Alright," Snake smiled. "I better go put her back in her terrarium. Nice meeting you Johnny! See you backstage Fleur."

He walked away. Boss rolled their eyes and looked to Johnny for some kind of confirmation of disbelief.

"Dude's got a fucking snake in a strip club," Johnny said.

"Fucking hate that guy," Boss said. "But the snake's ok," they added.

"Why?"

"He's an asshole. I don't gotta explain myself to you."

Johnny didn’t push them for any more explanation than that because, hey, they were right. He found himself feeling vaguely suspicious of Snake and his intentions. Maybe he was hiding something. Boss was probably right. Who the fuck took a snake to a stripclub? You probably couldn’t trust someone who took a snake to a stripclub. It wasn’t right. The two of them walked to the bar.

“Are you dancing tonight?”

“This place would fall down without me.”

“I forget, you’re the star attraction.”

“You know it.”

Johnny sat at the bar, although he was pretty sure he’d exhausted all the free drinks, and probably used up any goodwill left over. He didn’t really care about goodwill that didn’t translate directly into free drinks anyway. What were you supposed to do with good vibes? You couldn’t get drunk off that.

“Are you planning on staying?” Boss said.

“How else you gonna get back?” Johnny shrugged. Boss didn’t say anything, looking away from Johnny, barely hiding the grin on their face. They went backstage, glancing over their shoulder at him as though to confirm he hadn’t left. He raised an eyebrow before they vanished, their face almost glowing. He was finding it hard to stay looking cool himself, fighting the urge to smile back.

He recognised Ribs from their unpleasant first meeting but Ribs opted not to run over and make friends, although he did wink and faux-salute Johnny. Johnny contemplated faux-punching him. Or maybe just actually punching him. He laughed at his own joke. Someone gave him a funny look for that and he wished Boss had stayed so he wouldn’t be alone in his mockery. Snake had reappeared, minus the snake that Boss favoured. He made a beeline for Johnny, for reasons Johnny couldn’t even begin to speculate upon.

“How you doin’ Johnny?” Snake said.

“Fine,” Johnny said, with deep suspicion.

“Are you just waiting here?”

“I guess.”

Snake was smiling so benignly that it made Johnny even _more_ suspicious, simply because he couldn’t work out what the fuck he _wanted_. Was he just being nice? Why? What kind of maniac went around being friendly to people?

“Are you… Y’know…” Snake said, politely.

“What?” Johnny said.

“Never mind,” he said. “You’re just making yourself a permanent fixture, huh? You haven’t like, replaced Carlos have you?”

“I don’t think you could drag Carlos away from Boss with iron chains,” Johnny said.

“He’s dedicated,” Snake said.

Snake was in no rush to go anywhere at all it seemed, despite Johnny’s reluctance to drag out the conversation past what he saw as its natural conclusion. This was so awkward and yet Snake was just standing there and acting like this was _fine_ , for some reason. He decided to get out while he still could. He stood up and made to move away, somewhere else, didn’t even have an excuse yet.

“Where you going?” Snake said.

“Just… Having a look around…” Johnny said, his teeth gritted with frustration. He couldn’t lie for _shit_.

“Let me give you a tour!” Snake said with excruciating joviality. He actually place a hand on Johnny’s shoulder like they were old pals to guide him around. Johnny’s legendary patience was beginning to wear incredibly thin but he knew from experience that blowing up at people generally did not end well for him, and blowing up in his… Friend’s place of work wasn’t going to do either of them any favours.

“Sure,” Johnny choked.

            “And those are the private rooms,” Snake said. “Y’know. For… Uh… _Other_ customers.”

            “Yeah. Private dances,” Johnny said, unsure of Snake’s over-emphasis.

            “That and _other_ things.”

            “What, like-- Oh, shit. Really? I didn’t realise this place was a brothel too.”

            “It isn’t. But plenty of the guys here do sell ass on the side and Sal wants to give them a safe place to do that.”

            Johnny nodded. He mulled this over in his mind.

            “Does ‘plenty of the guys’ include Fleur?”

            “Yeah.” He gave Johnny a doubtful look. “You aren’t going to be a dick about that, are you? Fleur’s a good guy, I’d hate to see them get hurt by someone.”

            “You know Boss hates your guts, right?”

            “Yes. I don’t really take it personally.”

            This was a mystifying statement. He wasn’t entirely sure what the hell to say to that but he picked up on Boss’ voice rising in anger and that distracted him enough that he stopped caring about this conversation. He walked back through the long, twisting corridor, finding an unusual urgency in his movements. He was fairly certain it wouldn’t be anything but Boss picking another argument but he felt the need to come to heel regardless. Just in case. Better safe than sorry.

            Boss was picking another argument. A dancer Johnny hadn't had the privilege of meeting yet was standing with his arms crossed and his figurative hackles raised trying to stare Boss down. He was failing, but he was backed up with three other equally angry strippers while Boss stood alone. Johnny was still fairly sure Boss could take them all. If they fought anything like they danced they were probably the most lethal person in the room-- other than himself, of course. Johnny liked to consider himself the most dangerous man in any room, although that was potentially just pride.

            “You don’t _own_ this place Fleur,” Boss’ new worst enemy said. “You’re making it fucking dangerous to work here. I don’t wanna get jumped by some Brotherhood because they think I’m friends with _you_.”

            “If anyone thinks you’re my friend I’ll fucking jump them myself,” Boss said.

            “This isn’t a joke, Fleur!” Another chimed in.

Boss looked unconvinced. They looked over to Johnny for some affirmation, tentatively smiling, almost pleading for his support. He grinned and it emboldened them, their smile turning knife-edge sharp. Their critics looked at Johnny with deep disdain but he found himself not caring. He stood at Boss’ shoulder and squared himself up a little, shoulders back, hands in pockets. Bodyguard pose.

“What the hell are you doing here?” The man leading the posse shot at him.

“Minding my own fucking business,” Johnny said. “Have you tried it?”

“I’m not going to be intimidated out of here by shitty ex-gangsters,” Boss’ worst enemy said. “I’m talking to Sal about this.”

“Do whatever you want,” Boss said.

Their confidence didn’t amuse the others. The gathered observers talked amongst themselves but Johnny was getting the impression not all of them were on his and Boss’ side. He wasn’t sure when it had become ‘him and Boss’ but he wasn’t opposed to the idea. He liked the idea of having someone to support. Part of a team, part of a g--

“Oh shit, they are really are talking to Sal,” Boss said, watching as Sal walked out of his office and straight into a group of loud, angry strippers.

“You thought they were bluffing?”

“Yeah, kinda.” Boss produced a packet of cigarettes from a pocket. “Coincidental smoke break.”

“Where’s the smoking area?”

“Way the hell away from here.”

Clambering all the way through the caverns just to get away from Sal seemed extreme but following Boss felt instinctual. He just trotted along behind them as they led the way, more than a little amused. Boss wasn’t taking the situation seriously either, happy to avoid Sal until his anger subsided.

The caverns were predictably empty, although there were a few tourists insisting on exploring. The fact the caverns attracted enough customers to keep it open continued to astound Johnny, he didn’t see any of the appeal. The place was wet, cold, and had loud tinny ghost noises playing 24/7. It was the least entertaining underground tunnel system Johnny could ever imagine and the fact he had to walk through it to get to Echo was the worst part of his day. He wished the club was literally anywhere else simply so he wouldn’t have to walk through those fucking tunnels again. Every time he so much as brushed against a wall he came away from it drenched in slime. He’d burn the place to the ground if it was possible to burn rock. And if Echo wasn’t there.

As they approached the surface people were walking towards them, fast, heads down. They walked past, hurrying away from whatever it was that was up ahead. Johnny could hear raised voices, but not angry. Loud, laughing, but distinctly and obviously threatening. Boss looked curious rather than worried, their step quickening as they walked up the path. Ahead Johnny could see a group of Brotherhood. Boss stopped, watching for a second. They looked strangely calculating, like they were weighing up the odds. The Brotherhood saw them.

“Look who it is,” the first said. “It’s the Third Street Whores. They let you off your leash?”

“You’re lucky Maero ain’t beat your ass till you can’t work,” another Brotherhood added. “You’re living on borrowed time, Saint’s Whore.”

“Can’t believe anyone pays this bitch for anything,” a third said. “Must be giving it away.”

“How about you shut the fuck up?” Johnny said, taking a step forward. The guy leading the group was easily as big as him, and wasn’t threatened by Johnny stepping. There was five of them, after all, and only Johnny and Boss on their own. He took a step towards Johnny, sizing him up.

“Who the fuck are you?” He said. “You that thing’s new pimp or something?”

“You better think about shutting up real fast or I’m gonna see how long you can keep talking shit with that sledgehammer up your ass,” Johnny said.

The guy actually shoved him. Johnny shoved back, harder, sending the brawny Brotherhood member stumbling back and into one of his mouthy friends. They seemed remarkably unamused by this. Johnny was already gearing up for a fight, ready to take on all five of them alone. He’d done it before, he’d do it again.

“Don’t fuckin’ touch me,” the group leader said.

“Or what?” Johnny taunted. He slapped the guy on the shoulder, not hard, just enough to show he truly didn’t give a shit.

“Get the fuck out,” Boss said. It took them all by surprise. Johnny was aware he’d been expecting Boss to be a silent party in this, an observer that he could swoop in and rescue from the big bad Brotherhood. He was forgetting, that Boss used to be a gangster too.

“Shut up,” another Brotherhood member said, with disinterested mockery. “Faggot.”

Boss tilted their head to the side. They nodded slowly a couple of times, like they were reaching an agreement. They looked at Johnny. He found himself smiling, excitement bubbling up inside him. The understanding that this was going to be _good_. Boss didn’t smile back. He nodded once and then, _then_ they moved.

            They moved like an incoming tidal wave, and crashed down on the Brotherhood with just as much force. Johnny had been right about the dancing. Their fist hit the offending party under the chin so hard they cracked both his front teeth, the man falling backwards and hitting the ground in a spray of blood and chipped bone. They brought a foot down on his ribs, the sound of splintering bone audible even to Johnny. The next kick was to his face, caving in whatever teeth he had left under the heel of their boot.

            The leader tried to swing his sledgehammer but they dodged it, grabbing it and using it to pull the man closer towards them. He stupidly didn’t let go of the hammer and they brought an elbow down on his outstretched arms. He shrieked with surprised pain, dropping the hammer altogether. Boss picked it up, bringing it down on the back of his head with a sickeningly wet _crack_. When he hit the floor, his head was bent at an angle humans were not meant to contort themselves into.

            One of the Brotherhood moved away from Boss and into Johnny, and he threw himself into the fight with bloodthirsty glee. The man who’d fallen into him tried to move away again but didn’t have time to ready himself for a fight. Johnny hit him in the stomach first, then when he doubled over, an elbow to the back to drop him. Quick and easy.

            The first gunshot made Johnny jump a little. He hadn’t seen Boss pull the gun, even seen where they’d been keeping it, but now one of the Brotherhood was dead on the ground and Boss had the barrel of their gun pressed to the forehead of the other. She had her eyes locked on theirs and a visible bead of sweat running down her brow. She was trying to figure out how she could get the gun out of Boss’ hand without getting shot. Boss was going to let that happen.

            “If I don’t kill you,” Boss said, “you’ll just come running back.”

            “Like rats,” Johnny said. “If release ‘em they just come back again.”

            “Better just to kill the infestation,” Boss said.

            “Fucking kill me then,” the Brotherhood said, her lips curling into a snarl. “No one starts shit with the Brotherhood and lives.”

            “Watch me,” Boss said. The back of her head hit the ground before the rest of her body crumpled to the floor.

            The one Johnny had taken down was trying to crawl away, scrambling to his feet and about to break into a run. But Boss was a good shot, and it wasn’t a challenge for them. The third and final gunshot rang through the caverns, echoing back to them off the rock walls. There was silence then, just the dripping of far-off water and the soft sound of Boss’ breathing. Deep, quiet breaths, unusually strained. Their eyes were unfocused but their lips were curling up at the corners, a smile slowly beginning to creep across their face. The two of them bumped fists.

            Footsteps growing closer slowed and Johnny looked up to see Carlos approaching. He was confused, then looked at Boss, seeing the gun in their hand.

            “Did you do this?” He said.

            “Yeah,” they said.

            “Why?”

            “I guess I just got tired,” they said, “of other people’s shit.”

            Their hand was brushing against Johnny’s just a little, and he wasn’t really thinking about it. He wouldn’t realise until later they’d been trying to hold it.


	6. First Interval

_Some years ago_

           Thumping at the door, slow and heavy, desperation mixed with exhaustion. Waking up in bleary-eyed confusion, jolted out of sleep by the noise. Clock on phone telling him it was not yet dawn, the sky still black as pitch beyond the thin plastic blinds, sky claustrophobic in summer heat. Skin clammy with sweat under sheets, shivering unpleasantly when suddenly exposed to the night air. Reaching under the bed for the shotgun as he clambered out, pounding heart and knocks at door both at the same urgency and pitch.

           Walking down the stairs in the dark, fingers stiff around the grip of the gun, each step cautious and fumbling. Not sure of the layout of the house still, the stairs steeper than the ones from his last home, muscle memory tripping him up. Not much of a home field advantage, if it came down to that.

           Standing at the door with a hand on the lock, waiting for knocks to be exchanged for the cracking of wood when patience ran out. Wanting to be reckless enough to just throw open the door and go out gun-first, telling self that a bit of sensible caution never hurt anyone.

           “Carlos.”

           A horde of Brotherhood or Samedi or someone at the door would be less surprising. Unsure that he was no longer dreaming. Hadn’t he had this fantasy before?

           Pulling the door open, seeing the blood first. The Boss covered in blood-- not as unusual as the tiredness in their face. Generally less blood in his fantasies.

           “What are you doing here?”

           “Are you going to let me in?”

           Walking without their usual arrogance, slumping. Stink of coppery blood and liquor and gunpowder. They flinch when the light blooms on overhead. No visible injuries, blood wasn’t theirs. Relief.

           “Are you--?”

           “Shut up.”

           Quiet. They sit on the couch, he waits behind them. Can’t bring himself to break the silence first.

           "Have you got any beer?"

           “No.”

           They look insulted. He needs to rescue this, because an alarm bell is ringing in his mind. An opportunity he does not want to waste. He does not want to miss out on being with them.

           “Tee ‘N’ Ay is still open.”

           Doubtful, but they nod. Relief. They don’t want to be somewhere so public but they want alcohol more than they care-- maybe they want to be with him, too. Hope blossoms inside him as they drive (he drives, the only time he has ever driven them) to Tee ‘N’ Ay in silence so solid it could hold back a thousand gallons.

           Tee ‘N’ Ay is empty. They both sit at the bar and order beers. The girls leave them alone. They can tell when people don’t want to be bothered. And also, the blood. It’s off-putting. He doesn’t like empty bars. Music is droning in the background and he wished they had stayed at his house. The silence was better. The music just reminds him of good times they are not having.

           “What happened?”

           The Boss doesn’t want to answer, they know they owe him an explanation but it is hurting them to speak. Intimacy has to be earned, they have not reached that stage yet. A fondness that had not evolved into anything else yet. Carlos is becoming aware of the fact the Boss is only here because they have nowhere else to be, disappointment creeping over him. He wants the distance to be so much shorter.

           “The body of a man found at Thalia Amphitheatre earlier this night has been identified as Julius Little, a tour guide at Saint’s Row Memorial Church. Mr Little was once the leader of infamous gang the Third Street Saints, but it is unknown if his death was gang related…”

           The Boss is blank-faced. They are watching the tv set above the bar with terrible stillness. Carlos wants to read it as calm, but he thinks that they are numb. It is not heroic. Vulnerability makes him go cold. It is not right for the Boss to be vulnerable. He waited a very long time for them to wake up when he was inside. He’d heard all the stories, all the legends. He hadn’t expected a real person.

           “I didn’t kill him.”

           Rocked by this confession, somehow. Killing is what they  _do_. The Boss is  _affected_  by this. They have stopped running long enough for something to hit them and it has sent them stumbling into something they are not equipped to deal with.

           “Who did?”

           The Boss doesn’t answer. He is expectant but gets nothing, they have lapsed into empty-eyed silence. Carlos is sympathetic, achingly so, but not empathetic enough to understand. He longs to offer some kind of comfort but he is clumsy and he knows so little.

           “I’m sorry about your friend.”

           This is the wrong thing to say. Anger flashes, a lightning strike without the warning rumble of thunder. But they do not speak, there is no need to speak, just a look that makes the bottom of his stomach drop out.

           The anger evaporates. Carlos is not at fault, they believe.

           “Let’s go.”

           They are unhappy. Failure, frighteningly intense; his desperation to prove himself is an open bleeding wound.

           He will understand later but does not know that now. Now is just fear and disappointment born from this perceived failure. The Boss looks at him and their hand moves and he wonders if they are going to make contact but it never comes. There is so much not being said.


	7. Red Road

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Red road, red asphalt, blood on the ground.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Red Asphalt was actually the fourth mission, and it's a pity we didn't sync that up with the fourth chapter, but we'll have to make do. Our own Red Asphalt.

            “Have you done _any_ work in the last fortnight?”

            Johnny looked up at Detective Royce and wondered what the fuck her problem was. He was doing work right that second, filling out a profile about someone suspected of being involved with a club. He’d never seen them in Echo in the two weeks he’d been visiting the club so he strongly suspected that, once again, the cops were looking in the wrong place entirely. Useless. But Hughes was milking the department for airtime again, so the pressure was on. Johnny had locked himself in the men’s room to avoid being put on camera twice now. If anyone at Echo saw he was a cop that’d be the end of his nights there.

            “What?” Johnny said to Royce.

            “Have you just completely given up?” She said. “You haven’t found a single lead in weeks.”

            “That’s because there aren’t any fucking leads,” Johnny said. “Because this is a waste of time.”

            Royce glared at him.

            “If that’s how you feel, Officer Gat,” she said, “maybe you’d be better off in a different department.”

            “Please,” Johnny said. “ _Please_ get me moved to another department. I am _begging_ you.”

            Royce didn’t have an answer for that. She hadn’t been expecting him to agree with her. She huffed and moved back to her desk, stopping to whisper angrily with Detective Philips, neither of them bothering to disguise the fact they were talking about him. He leaned back in his chair and thought about how long he had left in here before it was acceptable to flee.

            He’d been hoping buddying up to Troy would get him something but he’d gotten no special privileges. Troy seemed to be avoiding him recently. Maybe he’d pushed too hard with asking about the Saints. Fuck Troy. Fuck the whole Stilwater Police Department. He didn’t know why he even came in anymore. How much would they even notice if he didn’t? Apparently Royce would. The fuck was _her_ problem. He hadn’t even known her before he got moved to this shithole but she was happy to pass judgement. He hated her. He hated all of them.

            The clock struck five and he was out of his seat faster than the second hand could move off the dot. Ribs was performing tonight and Johnny wondered which of his own clothing was most resistant to glitter. If he went straight to Echo he could probably get there before Boss went on. Maybe he’d grab a couple of beers. He wasn’t in any rush to get home early tonight. Or any night.

            His thoughts were lazy abstract plans about another night at Echo, and he didn’t even see the Brotherhood car in his rearview mirror. Or if he did see, it the fact that it was following him didn’t really register. He was on autopilot, heading to Black Bottom the exact same way he drove every day without any reason to think this would be any different.

He was pulling up outside the Caverns when the Legion full of Brotherhood slammed into the side of the Venom, caving in the passenger side door and showering Johnny in shattered glass. Shock gripped him at first, looking up at the huge truck that had just rammed itself into the side of his beautiful car. Then the driver’s door was yanked open and he was dragged out onto the asphalt, hitting it back first. He tried to sit up but received a boot to the face, a kick under his chin that smashed his mouth shut and sent pain ringing through his head. He tasted blood.

A bat cracked against his ribs, winding him completely. He was metres away from the entrance to the Caverns but it was too far a distance for him to cover. The bat smashed into his skull and Johnny’s entire world tilted and whirled around him, his head screaming in pain. White lights were flashing in front of his eyes. He grabbed out blindly, roaring with frustration. He got a fistfull of someone’s shirt or jacket-- he couldn’t even tell-- but it was to no avail. The bat came down on his arm and the sudden pain forced him to let go. That this was so fucking _unfair_ was one of the last coherent thoughts he managed to have.

They hauled him up when he was drooling blood and on the verge of slipping into unconsciousness. He thought there was someone standing near the caverns and tried to open his mouth to speak but then his face was slammed into the side of the truck and his glasses went rattling to the ground and it was too hard to keep track of anything that was going on outside the static in his head.

* * *

 

The Boss was looking unhappy in that special way only the Boss could look unhappy, like they were unspeakably furious with the whole universe and could barely even afford the courtesy of not screaming. Carlos strongly suspected it had everything to do with the fact Johnny hadn’t shown up. There had been no arrangement, no agreement that Johnny _would_ be there that night, but it had been _understood_ he would be. Because he was there every night. Johnny was there. Every. Night. With a predictability that Carlos had begun to despise, Johnny would show up half an hour before the club opened-- a privilege Carlos used to believe was afforded only to him-- and then take up half the bar while engaging the Boss in conversations that Carlos found meaninglessly dull but held the Boss in absolute rapture. Carlos didn’t really know how Johnny did it-- although he suspected it had everything to do with his huge biceps and throaty laugh like he had something to prove-- all he knew was that it _pissed_ _him_ the _fuck_ off.

And now the Boss was sulking. There was nothing that quite confirmed feelings of inadequacy like being around someone who was sulking because you were all they had left. The Boss was sitting in their dressing room pretending like they didn’t give a shit while Carlos loitered in the corner being ignored. When his phone rang he almost hoped it was someone else asking after him so he could abandon the Boss too, for a few hours. Maybe then they’d appreciate him. That didn’t make any sense. He answered his phone.

“Carlos, I need to talk to Fleur.” Snake was talking in hushed tones, urgent and fearful. For a second Carlos contemplated how spiteful he really could be and almost hung up. Being expected to play secretary was almost asking too much, right then. But his loyalty was stronger than that.

“Boss,” Carlos said. “Snake’s on the phone. He says he wants to talk to you.”

“Tell him to fuck off,” the Boss said, predictably. They looked at the phone balefully, like the force of their hatred could be transmitted by phone signals alone.

“They said they want you to fuck off,” Carlos dutifully told Snake.

“Carlos I’m not messing around!” Snake said. “This is an emergency!”

“He says it’s an emergency,” Carlos informed the Boss.

“Tell him to fuck off.”

“They said--”

“CARLOS! Just give them the phone!”

Carlos had never, ever, in the near two years the Boss had been working at Echo, heard Snake raise his voice. He was shocked, frankly. His whole worldview had been shaken. He stood up and walked to the Boss, handing them the phone. They rolled their eyes at him but took it anyway. Weren’t going to pass up an opportunity to give Snake a piece of their mind.

“What--” they started to say before Snake cut them off.

Carlos couldn’t hear what Snake was saying but the anger washed off the Boss’ face in an instant, their mouth hanging open in futile disbelief. Maybe Snake had yelled at them too. They stood up, knocking their chair aside, turning from the mirror and walking towards the door. They hung up on Snake without so much as another word. Carlos was almost a little afraid. The Boss wasn’t known for being quiet.

“Boss, what’s...” he tried to say, letting the question trail off. He didn’t know if he wanted to find out.

“The Brotherhood,” they said. “Snake said he saw them… They’ve got Johnny.”

“They’ve got Johnny? What do you mean?”

“I mean they fucking yanked him right off the street,” the Boss said. “And now they’re going to kill him.”

“You can’t let them,” Carlos said. It wasn’t even a question. It didn’t even need to be said. He hated Johnny, sure, but this was something else entirely. And this was more than just Johnny. This was the Boss taking a stand against the Brotherhood, this was the Boss really doing something, this was the Boss fighting back--

“Damn fucking right I can’t let them,” the Boss said.

* * *

 

Johnny was something approaching awake, but it wasn’t any better than unconsciousness. His ears were ringing and head cramping with pain, and he was lying on the cold metal floor of a truck bed with arms tied behind his back. When he moved his ribs sent pain shooting through his body; he’d probably cracked one by his estimation. But he didn’t think he had time to sit around crying about it so he ignored his own body’s instructions to lie still and rest and began trying to writhe his way out of the ropes wrapped around his wrists. His arms were bound too tightly for him to be able to move them, and when he tried to pull himself into a sitting position the pain in his ribs was so bad he thought he was going to black out again.

A couple of Brotherhood members loomed over him, looking down at him. One of them was laughing, the other was clutching a length of iron chain. He tried to kick out at them but failed miserably, his coordination shot to hell by the world insisting on tilting back and forth like he was strapped into a fairground ride. They both laughed then, a couple of crows circling him and cawing in delight at his anger. He tried to spit out some choice insults but the words weren’t cooperating and he just slurred incomprehensibly.

The man with the chain pulled it taut in his hands. Johnny didn’t know what it was for. Johnny didn’t want to know what it was for. The man with the chain was smiling.

_Some_ people said that Boss was not a good driver. This opinion was largely based on Boss’ total disregard for traffic law, inability to not run over people and crash into other drivers, habit of driving wherever in the road they felt like, and complete refusal to stop at red lights. Boss thought they were a pretty good driver. Boss thought this because they could get wherever they wanted to go and they could get there _fast_. And right then, fast was all they needed.

They had their hands on the wheel and their foot slammed down on the accelerator and they were bullying their way through traffic like they were driving a Compensator, instead of yet another shitty Danville. Car horns squealed as they roared past, tires barely gripping on the tarmac as they slalomed around corners, managing to avoid head-on collisions but losing a wing mirror and most of the paint on their back doors as they crashed past car after car. It didn’t matter. None of these people fucking _mattered_. They could taste blood.

This brought back memories. This feeling of raw, bloody fear, the knowledge that failure was _not an option_. Adrenaline surging through them and leaving them cold with anger. They hadn’t felt like this in a long time. But they weren’t this scared before. In the past they’d never entertained the idea they wouldn’t come out on top. Unfortunately now they knew now that that _was_ a possibility. That they might not get to Johnny. That he might not be ok. That he could be John Doe floating in the Stilwater river or lying bloody and abandoned in a tourist trap.

Thinking about it, getting _emotional_ about it, was just going to weaken their focus. You couldn’t fight if you were too busy _crying_ like a _child_.

Snake had said the Brotherhood were in the Barrio. It wasn’t far. They’d get there in time. Boss would get there. They believed it. They didn’t have the strength to doubt.

Johnny was struggling to keep track of the world. His eyes were blurry with sweat and blood and he’d lost his glasses a long time ago. Every time he tried to focus the world would sickeningly tilt and swirl until it became an incomprehensible mess of colour and shapes that he couldn’t recognise. He had a concussion, he thought. He knew how to deal with concussions but it was easier said than done to handle it when you were chained up in the back of a moving truck.

Johnny didn’t scare easy. Johnny didn’t scare at all. Where most people got scared, he got mad, or he saw the joke in it all. This stemmed from the fact that Johnny had never been in a position in his life where he felt _really_ helpless. When you were in a fight you could just punch someone, shoot someone. You could always get back on your feet in a fight. There were other kinds of helplessness; there was the inability to stop yourself from being demoted when even you know you messed up. The inability to stop everyone in the force thinking of you as a monster. The inability to get back that promotion-- you were supposed to be _lieutenant_ … Those were all things Johnny couldn’t fix. But he’d never been _physically_ helpless.

He couldn’t save himself. Admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery.

The truck stopped and when something flared up inside Johnny’s chest he had trouble realising that it _was_ fear he was feeling. Johnny had never been very good at the whole feelings thing. But as the Brotherhood dragged him out of the truck bed and onto the concrete he knew that he was scared. It felt like such a pathetic situation to be in. He was supposed to be Johnny Gat. Johnny _motherfucking_ Gat.

Johnny motherfucking Gat drooled blood on the ground as the Brotherhood connected a chain from his ankles to the back of the truck.

* * *

 

There was a Brotherhood truck up ahead, driving through Ezpata. Just dawdling along the road, heavy metal music pounding through the windows, like absolutely nothing was wrong. Boss drew up alongside them, driving straight down the middle of the road with traffic on the other side tearing past with horns blaring. The passenger in the Brotherhood truck glanced at Boss and then did a double-take, mouth open in confusion. He shouted to the driver, the other men in the truck turning to look at Boss. Two of them were laughing, but they stopped when Boss slammed their car side-long into the truck. The Danville didn’t have the weight to push an Alaskan truck off the road or do it any serious damage and the driver just sped up, forcing the truck forwards and knocking the Danville back and further onto the left side of the road.

Boss pressed forwards, cursing the fact they were trapped in a car with such terrible acceleration. Maybe they’d get an Attrazione. Then maybe they’d fly to fucking Mars.

They were coming up on the Alaskan again. There was no way in hell they’d be able to run it off the road. If they started shooting it was just going to turn into a gunfight and they were at a major disadvantage. Boss needed to stop the car and they needed to stop it now. One fucking boost was all they’d need to get in front of this thing… They used to have cars with nitrous. They used to have a fleet of sports cars. There was a time when these Brotherhood would have shit their pants looking at Boss. They stamped on the accelerator.

They swerved into the road in front of the truck, stopping horizontally across the road. The driver of the Alaskan hit the breaks just in time, the passengers jerking forwards and back in their seats from the force of the stop. The Boss stepped out of the car as the driver climbed out of the truck. Their pistol was a comforting cold block in their hand, the grain of the handle starting to leave impressions on the palm of their hand their grip was so tight.

“What--” the driver began, before the Boss slammed the butt of their pistol into his skull and dropped him to the ground.

“Where the fuck is he?!” The Boss screamed. The others were starting to climb of the truck but none of them looked particularly interested in running headlong into a fight. They were so hesitant it could almost be taken as fear. How bizarre.

“Where’s who?” The driver said, clutching his head.

“Johnny!”

“Who the fuck’s Johnny?!”

“Big guy, sunglasses, hangs around my fucking club,” the Boss spat. “Where is he?”

“How the hell should I know?” The driver said. Blood was beginning to trickle around his forehead. He was younger looking than most of the Brotherhood the Boss saw. They all were. New recruits, maybe. In all honesty that just made them less worth keeping around.

“D-didn’t Marcus say Jessica was having them do something with the bodyguard?” One of the other Brotherhood said. His eyes were fixed on The Boss and he was visibly sweating. Boss turned their gun on him and he held up his hands in fear. He had a knife on his belt, but no visible gun. None of them had guns. What was this, amateur hour?

“Shut up Rex!” Another passenger hissed.

“What are they going to do with him?” The Boss said.

“I don’t know!” Rex said, hands still in the air. “I think they said they were going to take him for a drive.”

“A _drive_?”

* * *

 

They left him lying on his back on the concrete and went back into the truck. Johnny tried to pull himself upwards, but his head and chest were screaming in agony and he nearly blacked out, falling back onto the ground with a thud that winded him. That was infuriating. He did a hundred sit-ups every day-- every day that he remembered at least-- and the fact he was so weak was just _pathetic_. This wasn’t like him. He was better than this shit.

He tried again, unable to stop himself from near-screaming, reality flickering around him in confusing bursts of light he couldn’t interpret. He slammed back onto the concrete again. His arms were still tied and he kept kicking but the chains were just jangling mockingly and refusing to come loose. He couldn't even see if they were knotted or padlocked. He could barely see anything. He felt like he was burning up from the inside out.

There was a roar that shook the ground and it took Johnny a second to realise it was engine being started.

* * *

 

The Boss didn’t know what the fuck a ‘drive’ meant but the possibilities blossoming in their mind were spiralling out of control and consuming all their other thoughts like weeds eating up fertile ground. The ability to keep calm was slipping away from them as their anger and their fear became as blindingly all-consuming as they’d known it would. _Don’t get emotional about it_. The mantra was dying away as they tore down the road and into Southern Cross. Their hands were so tight on the wheel they could have torn it out. They were shaking, physically shaking, uncontrollably. They wanted to say it was from pure adrenaline-fuelled rage but there was fear creeping in too, fear that was translating into a need to _fucking kill everyone_. Because however much anger and bitterness grew inside them they could always count on one thing-- that they would be better at shooting than everyone else in the room.

They saw another Brotherhood car, a Swindle with one driver at the helm, and for a second they thought they’d found him, for a second they thought it could be over, but once again it was nothing. They didn’t even waste time killing the bastard for the crime of entering their line of sight. They had a task to complete, they had a goal to fulfill. They weren’t going to let down yet another Saint. They didn’t have enough Saints left.

There was a truck in front of them, pulling out of a parking lot and onto the road with speed that had the tires screaming. Car horns blared as it cut through a lane of traffic, barely gripping onto the asphalt as it tore down the road, chains dragging behind it. Chains dragging behind it. Chains. On the back of the truck.

The Boss almost screamed. Their anger rose up inside them like some kind of physical wave, a scream rising in their throat like cold vomit. They stepped on the gas.

* * *

 

Putting him on the ground back-first had been their mistake. Johnny’s jacket was tougher than it looked and even though he could feel the leather disintegrating the second the truck took off, it was better than _nothing_. It was a few precious seconds of protection before the material ripped away entirely. His skin would be all that was left, after that. Skin and flesh and bone. How long could he have before every skin cell on his back was flayed off? How long did he get before he was roadkill? He was thrashing like a fish on the end of a line, using every bit of strength he had to keep his head off the ground, every muscle in his body screaming as he forced himself upright.

Then the dented, rusting, once-purple now grey Danville tore past him and slammed right into the side of the truck. Like a matchbox hurling itself against a brick wall. The truck rocked on its wheels, already unsteady from the speed, slipping even more on the wet asphalt. It skidded, not able to keep itself in line, the Danville taking up the space it had just vacated and trying to bully it off the road. Johnny was whipped across the road, trailing after the truck like a tail. He pulled his head down, rolled onto his side. He screamed as the sleeve of his jacket ripped open at the seams, tearing right off the shoulder and leaving him just that fraction more exposed. How long would a fucking _cotton shirt_ survive?

Gunshots. Bullets shattering glass and hitting home, judging by the sound of the screeching from the truck cab. The Danville swerved to the side as the Brotherhood opened fire, bullets bursting through the cheap metal sides of the car like tissue paper. Johnny didn’t have the strength to be scared for them too, not in this moment. He couldn’t fear for them too, not when he himself was at their fucking mercy. But he needed them to live, he needed them to get through this, or both of them were dead. It was a whole new spin on the concept of codependency.

Returning fire from the Danville, the truck spinning out of control, Johnny rolling over and over, his head cracking against the ground. His legs ready to be torn out of their joints, the skin on his face instantly burning when it hit the tarmac for less than a split second. Helpless, out of control, losing every last piece of protection he thought he had. Screaming. From the tires, from the Brotherhood. Inevitably, from him.

* * *

 

When the Brotherhood shot back the Boss’ head ducked so fast they almost hit the steering wheel. The last thing they needed was to knock themselves out, not _then_ of all times. Stupid, stupid. Be less clumsy. A well-placed shot could take the driver out and end this. But they couldn’t make a good shot if they fucking brained themselves on the steering wheel and cut everything short by giving themselves a concussion.

This kind of panicked nonsense wasn’t getting them anywhere. They lifted their head again, gun in hand. One of the Brotherhood in the truck was bleeding out and freaking out about it. The driver wasn’t keeping his buddy under control. None of them could aim but none of them ever could. Useless baby gangsters who didn’t know what they were doing. The Boss had dealt with worse than this. It was insulting, almost, to the other people they’d killed, to have to be on the same list as these scum-sucking _losers_.

The Boss fired back, basically just shooting blind because they didn’t know what choice they had and whenever they saw Johnny in their rearview mirror their mind went terrifyingly blank, nothing but white noises setting them on fire from the inside out. The driver didn’t know what he was doing, trying to dodge and yanking on the wheel when he did, the truck spinning in the road like a top. The driver realised he’d been shot and let panic set in immediately, any order inside the truck breaking down as the woman in the passenger seat tried to grab hold of the wheel to keep them on the road. The Boss couldn’t even see Johnny now, thrown out of their sight. They span the wheel left, crashing into the Legion again. The side of the Danville hit the top-right of the Legion, the door of the Danville crumpling inwards like cheap tinfoil, glass in the Boss’ window exploding. The truck’s headlights went, the panelling along the side tearing. The windshield cracked.

The Boss fired again, emptying the clip completely, the recoil of the gun in their hand shaking through their arm. Like they weren’t shaking enough already. The car was blocking the truck, but it was pushing back, dragging them both across the road. The truck’s horn was bellowing, the driver’s head slumped and pressed against the wheel. His foot was still on the accelerator. The passenger was trying to drag him off but she couldn’t take control because both of the knuckleheads in the back were losing their minds.

One of them jumped out, SMG in hand, shouts that he was going to end this if the others couldn’t fucking manage it. The Boss barely had time to reload, snapping a fresh clip into the gun so fast they nearly lost control and dropped the whole thing on the ground. Too many close brushes with the end. They were really rusty.

“I’m not getting taken out by some fucking _stripper_ over their fucking faggot boyfriend--” the man had time to yell before the Boss shot him three times in the head and he hit the ground like a sack of wet shit.

The Boss kicked open the door of the car, managing to drag themselves through, turning the gun on the two Brotherhood left. The woman in the passenger seat had her gun aimed at them, the guy in the backseat was going for the door, baseball bat ready. The Boss shot her first, the last one left looking at them in a moment of wide-eyed panic. He thought, for a moment, that they might not shoot him too. He mistook the Boss’ delay for mercy. The Boss emptied the rest of the clip in his head.

The gun slipped out of their hand then, useless to them now. It bounced on the concrete, metal rattling on the stone. They could see the chain coiling on the ground, a few loops near the rear tire of the truck. Boss took a step forward, the blaze of fear rising inside them like a fresh fire catching from the dying embers of their anger. If they had been too slow, they would only ever have themselves to blame. They knew that, even if they hadn’t been able to accept it yet. Accepting it would take time, more time than it would take for them to run to Johnny. And yet the microseconds it took were like the swelling of a great eternity of fear.

Johnny moved. Boss was on their knees beside him, bent over, hand turning his face to theirs. He moved his hand too, taking hold of Boss’ wrist. His grip was weak but it was real, it was an understanding.

“I need you…” Johnny said, somehow finding the strength inside himself to force out the words. “I need you… To get me out of these _fucking_ chains!”

“Right,” Boss said, shaking their head like they were trying to clear it. They pulled at the chains, at the knot at the base of the truck. The chains clanked helplessly.

“Yo, take your damn time,” Johnny said.

“I just saved your life,” Boss said. “You could show some gratitude.”

“I’ll give you gratitude when I’m not lying in the middle of the fuckin’ highway,” Johnny said.

Boss laughed, grinning, but it looked more like relief and disbelief more than it did like joy. They ended up pulling off his shoes, wrangling the chain off his feet in a pile of twisted links, unwinding from his legs in one clump of jangling metal. And like that he was free. Not that he didn’t ache all over, not that his entire body wasn’t screaming in pain. But he alive to feel it.

Boss bent down again, pulling him to his feet, arm around their shoulder. He leaned his weight on them, letting them take the brunt of him. The two of them hobbled off the side of the road, managing to make it across the road from Southern Cross and into the parking lot of a Freckle Bitch’s in Cecil Park. Then they both collapsed again, sitting on the asphalt near the drive-thru. Johnny was bleeding from his arm and back, his face was covered in filth and his clothes were in tatters, his jacket hanging off him in chunks. But living was better.

“Did you come straight from work?” Johnny said, looking at Boss’ thong and spats.

“No,” Boss said sarcastically. “I wear this all the time.”

“I thought as much,” Johnny said, trying and failing to wipe dirt off his face, only succeeding in smearing blood on as well.

“I’ve never seen you without glasses before,” Boss said.

“I’ve never seen you without glasses either,” Johnny said. “Because I can’t see _shit_.”

Boss laughed, slapping him on the shoulder in a way that made Johnny wince with pain. They wanted to apologise but in the end the two of them just brushed over it. Best to ignore momentary weakness.

“How did you know?” Johnny said.

“Snake,” Boss said. “He saw you get jumped. Told me what happened.”

“You still hate him though?” Johnny said.

“‘Course I do.”  

Johnny leant his head back against the drive-thru wall, focusing on breathing, on the fact he could still breathe for a few seconds. Of all the times he’d brushed with death, that was the closest. He would have been dead without Boss. He wanted to communicate that to them, how close to dying he’d really been, how without them he would have been nothing but a cocky smear of blood on the road. But the words didn’t form naturally and he didn’t know how to force them.

“Yo, I could really go for a burger right now,” Johnny said.

“Shit,” Boss said. “Me too.”

“Thank fuck for Freckle Bitch’s.”

“Best burger in Stilwater.”

“Do you have any money?” Johnny said. “Because those fuckers stole my wallet.”

“I look like I got pockets?” Boss said, gesturing to the fact they were wearing strings and not much else. “Oh no, wait, wait.”

They stuck a hand into the front of their pants, pulling out a few crumpled dollar bills. Johnny burst out into hysterical laughter, not able to hold himself together for a second longer.

“You’re going to give them that money?” He said.

“You can have a burger bought with filthy stripper money or you can have no burger,” Boss said, standing up and waving the bills in the air with some pride.

“Get me a filthy stripper burger,” Johnny said.

“Filthy stripper burger coming right up,” Boss said. “Maybe that’s what they should have called the restaurant.”

“What, ‘Freckle Bitch’s’ wasn’t bad enough?”

“Nothing bad about this place.”

“Only place worth gettin’ dinner in this city,” Johnny said.

“Damn right,” Boss said. “Where else would we go? Mikano’s?”

Johnny grinned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My co-conspirator Tupu wants you all to know she thinks "filthy stripper burger" is the best thing we've seen in the fic so far and honestly I think it's the best thing that's _ever_ going to be in this fic. How am I going to top that.


	8. "And how does that make you feel, Mr Gat?"

Johnny went to the hospital and told them he'd been jumped by some gang members. He didn't say who, or why. He told the work the same thing, and gave them no more explanation. They believed him, and told him to stay at home and rest for a few days. He was bored within seconds. He didn't know if staying home was better or worse than being at work and stewing in his own anger. At least he had something to _do_ at work, even if it was just writing endless case reports because no one wanted to let him do any field work, still. No one was willing to let anything _go_ in the force. Or they just weren't willing to let _his_ mistakes go. Troy ran with the Saints for years, must have shot a hundred cops, and they… Actually that probably wasn't a good example.

They'd given him some light pain meds for the fractured rib so he couldn't even get drunk while watching shitty daytime television. Daytime television was a lot less entertaining when you were sober. This was fucking pure misery. As he let his eyes glaze over while people on sofas tittered away about stupid bullshit -- some celeb's new baby was ugly, some other celeb had been arrested in New Jersey for attending male strip clubs, a new film was out they were pretending they liked -- Johnny found his mind slipping back to Echo, and to Boss. Especially Boss. He didn't really know how he felt about being _saved_. The whole 'damsel in distress' look wasn't something he'd ever thought about trying on. But the fact Boss had come to rescue him, gone through all that for him, that they'd sat on blood stained asphalt eating cheap burgers and just… _being_ together. It was starting to make Johnny feel like he was thirteen again, thirteen and trying to figure out what it meant when the cute girl who sat next to him in maths class smiled at him, and when exactly she'd become _cute_ , and when girls in general had started being something you _coveted_ , rather than just friends you occasionally mocked for having cooties.

But he wasn't thirteen, and hadn't been for a long time, and he knew how to talk to women now, he was above all that bullshit. And Boss… Boss was definitely not a girl.

He almost wished they were, a bit, just because he'd know what to _do_ then. But they weren't, and he didn't. And he was starting to feel uncomfortable. But his discomfort didn't come from receiving _unwanted_ attention.

He decided to stop thinking about it. Maybe the pain meds were making him delusional. Although even he couldn't convince himself of that one. He was shitty at telling lies in general, and that had to be one of his worst. He was periodically staring at the clock -- not a real clock of course, it was the 21st century, just the constantly ticking numbers on his phone -- and thinking about how long it would be before it would be acceptable to show up at Echo. An hour early? Two hours? Three? What if he just went right now? Would he really be waiting _that_ long before anyone else showed up? Time seemed to be stretching out impossibly.

He was there at 7:35, which was an hour before opening and as late as he could bear to wait. Walking in, all eyes were on him -- or at least it fucking felt that way. He wasn't sure if he was exaggerating the limp for effect or if it really was that bad. The mass of red, throbbing bruises on his face spoke for themselves really. Nino, standing by the bar with Sal, visibly flinched when he saw Johnny's face. A couple of the guys were looking away almost pointedly. Johnny felt a rush of pride, or something like it. Something a little bitterer maybe. Something with a little more schadenfreude.

Snake waved to him from where he stood by the stage, jogging over to him. To Johnny's surprise Snake pulled him into a tight hug. He hissed with a jolt of pain and Snake jumped back, spluttering out apologies.

"I'm really sorry," Snake said, "but I'm just so glad you're ok! I'm so glad Fleur got to you in time. I was so worried when I called them they wouldn't be able to reach you."

"Yeah, I…" Johnny didn't know what to say. How did you thank someone for saving your life? "Thanks, man."

"You don't have to thank me," Snake laughed. "What was I supposed to do? Let the boyfriend of one of my friends get kidnapped and do nothing?"

Johnny winced but couldn't quite bring himself to loudly correct Snake in front of everyone. Snake looked disconcerted by his reaction and the conversation died a hard death. Johnny limped to the bar, sitting down next to Nino.

"You heard what happened then?" He said to them.

"Carlos wouldn't shut up about it," Sal said.

"I'm sure he was real thrilled about the idea I might die," Johnny said.

"Not everything's about you," Sal said, which was a lot colder than Johnny had been expecting and did a pretty wonderful job at shutting him up. He felt a little resentful. It had only been a _joke_. And what the fuck did he mean, anyway? Johnny didn't have a clue what was going on in Carlos' beanied little head.

"Hey, why the hell is this place such a deadzone?"

Johnny did not know the man walking into Echo. Square faced, average height, wearing a white suit jacket that was soaked through from the constant Stilwater rain. He was smiling at Sal and Nino like he knew them, arms out wide. Walking in like he fancied himself the prodigal son

"Well, if it isn't Pierce Washington," Sal said good-humouredly. "You finally decided to take a stand against the Ronin, huh?"

"Yeah, I figure now they're all dead I got a pretty good chance of fucking them up," Pierce Washington said, sitting at the bar a few seat away from Johnny, quite deliberately.

"And we don't open for another hour," Nino said. "A respectable person would bother to come in during our actual business hours."

"No offence," Pierce said, "but that argument loses credibility when I'm sitting next to a dude who looks like he got into a fight with a truck."

"I did," Johnny said.

"Dudes who fight trucks aren't exactly what I call respectable," Pierce said. "Who is this guy?"

"Security," Nino said. "Kinda."

"Part of Fleur's entourage," Sal said.

"Fleur-de-Lys?" Pierce said. "The Saint? They're still here?"

"Yeah," Sal said. "Couldn't force them out of the place if you held a gun to their head."

"Shit," Pierce said. "I thought they would have… Y'know, tried something. Gotten themselves killed fighting Ronin or some shit. Isn't that what Saints do? Beat on the big kids until the cops come and blow everybody up?"

"They don't really do that shit no more," Nino said. He glanced at Johnny and then reconsidered this. "Well, until recently, anyway."

"What, Fleur-de-Lys beat you up?" Pierce said to Johnny, grinning.

"No," Johnny said. "A bunch of big Brotherhood motherfuckers did this. Boss got me out of it."

"'Boss'? So they're really running the Saints again?"

"They never _stopped_."

Carlos broke into the conversation with characteristic defensiveness. He looked at Johnny, neither sympathetic nor perturbed by the bruising, but not bitter either. His face was a carefully composed mask of indifference.

"Could have fooled me," Pierce said.

"The hell would you know?" Carlos said.

Pierce raised his eyebrows, but didn't say anything. He gave Johnny a look that suggested he was finding Carlos laughable rather than taking him as any kind of threat.

"Ok man," Pierce said. "Whatever you say."

Pierce's neutrality drained Carlos' anger and he deflated a little. With the argument ripped out from under him before it had even begun he didn't really have anything to say. He looked back at Johnny, mulling something over.

"I'm glad the Boss saved you," Carlos said.

"You are?" Johnny said.

"They… It's good to see them fighting back," Carlos said.

"Doesn't matter that I nearly got killed for it."

"If it had been me tied to the back of that truck I'd still be glad. It's not you… I just want the Saints back."

This was wildly outside of Johnny's comfort zone. There was an unignorable raw honesty in Carlos' face and it was too fucking personal, too much information, inviting a kind of closeness that he didn't want. He wasn't going to bleed out all his problems to Carlos and he expected the same. Not just from Carlos, from everyone. He was worried Carlos was going to start spewing all kinds of shit now, about his… Brother, wasn't it? And how much he wanted the Saints back. Johnny didn't want to hear it. He'd much rather talk to Pierce, about literally anything else.

"The Boss used to be someone, you know," Carlos said. "They took down the Rollerz and the Vice Kings and Los Carnales. They did. They ran this city. And they're just reduced to…"

"This makes them happy," Johnny said slowly, not sure of what reaction he wanted or was going to get. Carlos didn't say anything. Uncomfortable silence settled. Nino had walked away like he had something really urgent to attend to somewhere on the other side of the club and even Sal had vanished behind the bar, leaving Johnny and Carlos to work it out. Pierce, on the other hand, was watching with overly casual curiosity, like he was hoping for some good entertainment.

"I know that," Carlos said. "But they're worth so much more than this. They're capable of anything but they've just resigned themselves to being... Fucking nothing."

"Sounds to me man like you're spending too much time thinking about what you want for them and not enough about what they want for themselves," Pierce said. He said it in a tone of voice that made Johnny think it was probably true, a convincing matter-of-fact way of presenting the idea that was designed to deflect arguments before they began. It didn't work on Carlos.

"Maybe it's about more than just what they want," he said.

"Because all that _really_ matters is what _you_ want," Johnny said. It was an incredibly incendiary thing to say. It was too easy, taking the pot shot at the fish in the barrel just because you were near a BB gun. Not even wanting to kill one. Just doing it because the gun was there, the fish were there, and setting out on the open ocean scared you too much.

Unfortunately, Carlos was a lot less willing to roll over and die than metaphorical goldfish.

"Out of the two of us," he said, "only one of us has been with the Boss for three years. Only one of us is a Saint, and knows what that means. Only one of us actually gives a fuck about something more important than ourselves."

"I give a fuck about plenty of things," Johnny lied.

" _Yeah_ ," Carlos said. " _Sure_. And that's why you're in here day in, day out, even more than I am. That's why the second your shitty 9-to-5 job lets you out of your cubicle you come racing down here. Because there are other things in your life worth caring about _other_ than staring at the Boss' ass all day and daydreaming about what it would be like if you worked up the guts to try touching them."

"What the fuck?!" Johnny said, because it was the only thing that he _could_ say, before the shock subsided into violent rage and he found himself standing, bar stool knocked aside in his rush to start making Carlos _regret_ his words. He took hold of Carlos' shirt, pulling him in so the two were almost eye-to-eye, his anger powerful enough to let him ignore the burst of pain in his ribs.

"I don't know why the fuck you think I want to be anything more than Boss' friend," Johnny said, "but if you don't stop saying I'm into _that_ kind of shit then I'm going to break your fuckin' legs, you understand me?"

Carlos shoved him back, pulling himself away from Johnny. He looked disgusted, lips curled into a sneer. Repulsed, almost, not so much by Johnny's words as by his desperation.

"How was anything in your shitty speech any different than what you do?" Johnny said, a last ditch effort to not let himself be the one standing in the dirt.

"I have friends outside of here," Carlos said, "I don't spend every waking minute here. I have dreams. I don't have to _imagine_ what it would be like to touch the Boss."

Johnny froze. "You... You've... Slept with Boss?"

"Why does it matter what the Boss does and with who?" Carlos said, speaking in dares and taunts. "Why do you _care_?"

There was no single response to this that wouldn't be a confession. If he lied, everyone in the entire city would be able to tell, and if they knew he'd lied then they'd have good grounds to guess at _why_ he was lying. If he was honest, if he opened his mouth and told the truth… Not that he was sure what the truth _was_ , let alone how to explain it. He was standing on an edge and a step forward would send him plunging into the depths of something he couldn't even _begin_ to calculate the enormity of. He still hadn't stopped denying it was there at all, like a man decrying the existence of gravity while watching a bowling ball plummeting towards his own head. Carlos had dragged him right into a trap and the only option he really had was to say nothing at all.

So he punched Carlos in the face.

It would be a lie to say neither of them had seen it coming, the outbreak of a fight between them had been inevitable since the first moment they'd met and hated each other, but Carlos seemed shocked that it had finally begun. He'd been spending enough time goading Johnny, ought to have expected it, but still looked taken aback when Johnny's fist made violent contact with his jaw. He didn't get a chance to throw a punch in response, didn't need to in the end. Because the next person to hit Johnny wasn't Carlos, wasn't some rival bursting in like unwanted rays of sun through broken blinds. The next person to hit Johnny, with force that reminded him of being hit in the face with a bowling ball, was Boss.

"What?!" Johnny said, feeling sickeningly betrayed by this twist.

"What the fuck is going on?" Boss said.

"You hit me!" Johnny said.

"You hit Carlos," Boss said.

And it all felt so fucking pointless. The truth of it was, Carlos had one very good point. Him and Boss were Saints. They were united, brothers in arms, blood brothers, a single cause. Johnny was not. Johnny was a cop, and barely even that. He was, and would always be, an outsider to them. And that made him ache inside, a kind of loneliness that he hadn't been able to so much as consider for a long time. It was pain, and Johnny did with it what he did with all pain; he turned it into anger. The world was out to get him and all of this, all of these people, they were just more undeserved punishment being inflicted upon him for reasons he couldn't even begin to comprehend. It was like he'd gone to fucking hell.

He pushed past Boss and began walking to the exit, still feeling betrayed and feeling angry at both them for not taking his side and himself for not realising the inevitability of this all. Angrier for caring. Angrier and angrier, the emotions piling up on top of themselves in ways he couldn't interpret or untangle, feeling increasingly like a pressure cooker. He was halfway through the caverns before Boss caught up to him. They grabbed his arm, holding him in place, clinging to him.

"What the hell's up with you?" They said.

"Nothing," he said. The waterfalls in the cavern were roaring with the excess water, the ceaseless rain swelling the rivers and lakes. They were five inches from each other and shouting, voices almost drowned out by the water surrounding them.

"Right," they said. "Come back and have a beer."

"I'm on pain meds."

"Then come back and have a _root_ beer, stop fucking around."

Agonisingly long pause. No point in trying to play it cool. Cheekbone hurt from where they hit it. Head pounding.

"Carlos said you fucked him." What the fuck? Why did he say that? Why, out of every lame quip and dad joke that he could have spat out, did his mind decide that _that_ was the most important thing for him to tell Boss?

"Yeah," Boss said. "For money. That's what I do."

"Carlos _hired_ you?"

"He keeps trying to just _give_ me money. I'm not going to just take fucking money off him, not when I have a job so I _don't_ have to be a charity case. If I can give him something back then at least I'm working."

"But you and him aren't..."

"No."

He'd never felt so fucking stupid in his life. This awful disconnect between his feelings and his conscious thoughts and what he was able to say. He'd been very angry for a very long time. It got exhausting, after too long. It stopped being passionate rage and became dull and numbing, directionless and destructive on both ends. He was tired of not caring about anything. And now there was Boss, and there was a chance at something worth giving a shit about, and he didn't want to keep denying that it was there. One way or another something was going to hit him.

"Let's get a beer," Johnny said.

Inside Carlos was talking to Pierce by the bar, and Pierce was starting to look hopelessly indignant. He turned his look of wounded outrage to Boss.

"You remember me, right?" He said.

"Have we met?" Boss said.

"Oh come on!" Pierce said. "I was like a regular here! You, dude with the snake, you remember me?"

Snake smiled politely but it was clear nothing was coming to mind.

"Sure honey," he said sweetly, "course I do."

Pierce was unimpressed.

"Man I used to be shit before the fuckin' Ronin ran me out of town," he turned to Boss. "You had _nothing_ to do with them going under?"

"Nothing," Boss said. "They just burned out. Stupid asshole running them didn't know what he was fucking doing."

"So now it's just the Brotherhood and the Sons," Pierce said.

"And it doesn't look like the Sons are gonna be around for much longer," Carlos said. "The Brotherhood are really starting to push them out."

"The cops are starting to turn on them too," Johnny said. "They're on their last legs."

"Almost seems like there's room for someone else to step up," Pierce said.

There was a pause but, unusually, not one filled with outrage. Boss was quiet, their face still but their mind obviously ticking away.

"Don't have much of a crew," they said, testing the waters.

"Because you needed so much help when you took down the VKs, and the Rollerz, and Los Carnales," Carlos said.

"You may not have the numbers," Pierce said, "but you have two of the most loyal, angriest motherfuckers I've ever seen and I'm pretty sure they'd do anything for you. If you could get a few guys who are _half_ as dedicated as these two..." Pierce shook his head. "I was never in the Saints but I'm telling you, there is something about this fuckin' gang. Admittedly, you are all crazy--"

"Thanks," Boss said.

"-- But you sure as hell don't believe there's ever a fight too big," Pierce said. "Or one you can't win."

* * *

 

"Is this just how it’s going to be? You going behind my back whenever it suits you?”

Maero glared at the back of Jessica’s head until she stopped messing around counting cash and looked at him. She eventually turned around, wearing a gentle smile that always made him twinge with guilt a little. It was a very deliberate attempt to get him to calm down. But he was _right_ on this one, he _knew_ he was, and he was going to talk to her about it.

“I wasn’t going behind your back,” she said.

“You gave them the ok to kill the bodyguard and now all four of them are dead,” Maero said. “You didn’t even _think_ about clearing it with me.”

“I didn’t think it _mattered_ ,” Jessica said. “They were all furious about the Saints beating on them. I just wanted to let them get their own back, baby. I thought it would be good for the gang.”

“You can’t just make decisions like that without me!” Maero said. “If they just left the Saint alone in the first place --”

“You’re on the Saint’s side now?” Jessica said. “Maero, they’re killing the Brotherhood! This is getting beyond. I know Sal’s your friend…”

“I’ve known Sal for a very long time,” Maero said. “I’m not screwing him over for someone else’s grudge.”

Jessica bit back on what she was about to say next, wrangling her temper back under control. She knew losing it with Maero wasn’t going to achieve anything but making him more stubborn, but her resentful stare was enough to let him know he hadn’t won her over with the same, tired, ‘old friend’ argument. Neither of them knew how it was still holding them up, but the strings were starting to fray and it wasn’t going to be long before they crashed through it.


	9. Mutually Assured Destruction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's going to get gay

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a long time! I've had a very busy semester at university, I'm trying to write a novel, blah blah excuses blah here's Boss and Gat making out. Merry Christmas.

Boss had a thick wad of cash and Boss was very pleased with it. They sat in the car next to Johnny flicking through it occasionally, like they wanted to check it was all still there, listening to the rustle of the paper as they thumbed over it. It used to be the norm for them to heaving around stacks of cash like this. Not so much anymore. And now they had some money, they had every intention of spending it.

"Where the hell you'd get all that anyway?" Johnny said. 

"Ultor execs can be really generous when the mood strikes them," Boss said. 

"You get fuckin' Ultor execs down in Echo?"

"Yeah, all the time. They're not subtle about it. And now I reap the benefits. The benefits are shopping at Impressions."

"Right," Johnny said. "And remind me of why I'm driving you there?"

"You got a nicer car than me," Boss said.

The Venom had been patched up, although it had taken some time to get it running, let alone looking decent again. They hadn't found a lot of new parts the same colour -- they didn't even make Venoms like this anymore -- so Johnny had had the whole car repainted. He'd gone with purple.

Johnny was about to make a snide comment about Boss' car when they noticed something. The two of them were sitting at an intersection in Red Light, waiting for the chance to go, but Boss had been distracted by the veritable horde of cop cars congregating around some old buildings off the side of the road. They weren't far from Boss' apartment, in an area Ultor still hadn't gotten their shiny clean hands on. The cops were dragging out what looked like five or six Samedi from what Johnny guessed had to be the old mission house. 

"What's going on there?" Boss said.

"Another bust," Johnny said. He really wanted to get going before his coworkers took notice. "Samedi hideout I guess."

"In that tiny mission house?"

"Well, years ago, an earthquake dropped part of the city below sea level. And rather than clearing out the rubble, the city built over it. There's an abandoned hotel below the mission." Johnny shrugged, taking a turn away from Red Light and towards Nob Hill. "They're probably down there."

"You think the cops realise that?" Boss said. "How far underground it goes?"

"Maybe. Why?"

Boss didn't say anything.

* * *

 

“Yo, why the hell are we stopping at some rotten old church?” Johnny said, looking around to see if there was any indication that the cops were going to return within the next ten seconds. 

The parking lot in front of the old mission was empty, the cops having dragged off as many Samedi as they could catch. There was a brand new blood splatter on the ground to mark their efforts, but that and the single strand of police tape across the doorway were the only sign the cops had been. The single strand of police tape that Boss had just torn off so they could walk into the mission house with slightly more ease. 

“I’m curious,” Boss said. 

“About  _ what _ ?”

“Do you think we’re going to be able to stay in the caverns forever?” Boss said.

“Do you think you’re going to get caught?” Johnny couldn’t resist asking another question, the irony of it was too tempting. At least he thought it was irony. “Do you think the cops are onto you?”

“I don’t think the pigs have gotten far away enough from Apollo’s to realise there’s a club right under their fuckin’ noses,” Boss said. “But I didn’t mean Echo. I meant  _ us _ .”

The mission inside was in a predictably awful state, abandoned for longer than Johnny could imagine, falling apart from the inside out. The pews had been broken, the wood of the posts in the walls rotting black, paint peeling off the walls in chunks. Everything was coated in that layer of grime that came from the combination of dust and damp. But Boss didn’t linger, walking into a room on the side and vanishing from sight. Johnny followed, finding the side room had a second door leading down into a basement. Nothing here was clean or holy. Just as well; it was going to be desecrated soon enough. 

The basement kept going down and then suddenly they were in a whole new building, the cold air of the underground, the empty chasm of abandonment yawning open in front of them. Past two rooms, torn out shells that were barely held together by the framework, down a flight of sweeping stairs. It would have been grand once, the entrance of some hotel neither he nor Boss could afford a night at. Now it was torn bare, blasted apart, the dark walls of the underground closing in and choking the glamour out of it long before the squatters moved in and desecrated every inch of the place. It was amazing it was still standing, the walls steadily crumbling away as they were, the bare support beams straining to hold it all together. 

But for a minute, standing on the staircase with Boss in front of him, near the half-form of what would have once been a Romanesque statue, something stirred in Johnny’s chest. Like a feeling of love for the place, despite it being damp and rotten from the inside out. They two of them walked down the stairs, into what had once been -- what, the entrance hall? The ballroom? Johnny didn’t know. What he did know what that he could  _ see _ the worth of this place, he could feel the opportunity they had just been afforded. When he looked at this place and looked at him and the Boss in it, that ‘us’ felt  _ real _ . 

“So…” Johnny said, “Whatchu think?” 

The Boss pulled a face. Johnny made his way across the dirty floor, the scuffed and decaying marble, sat on a rotting couch with no springs.

“It’s kind of a shit hole,” the Boss said. 

“True dat,” Johnny said. “But it’s a shit hole… With po- _ tential _ .”

“I dunno man…”

“Oh, come on,” Johnny said, warming to the idea more and more. “A stripper pole, some flat screens… Maybe some nicer furniture…”

The Boss grinned, a closed-mouth smirk of mutual understanding. They sat next to Johnny, a little close but not close enough, leaning back into the couch with him.

“You had me at stripper pole,” they said.

“Fuckin’ A,” Johnny said. The two of them bumped their fists together then which was stupid, it was childish, but Johnny was happy in a way that was so earnest it was almost embarrassing and he was so  _ glad _ the Boss was there. 

“You guys really wanna hang out down here?”

Carlos was walking down the steps, not so much looking at the potential hideout with admiration as open bemusement. The Boss hauled themselves off the couch and began pitching the plan to Carlos, filling his head with visions of a redecorated crib, with the nice furniture and the flat screens and the all important stripper pole. It turned into  _ poles  _ when the Boss spun it but Johnny didn’t care about the details because they liked his plan enough to keep it and they liked his plan enough to let the optimism of it fill them, turn them blind to the complications and their own doubts. Their enthusiasm made them powerful. 

“But why do we really need a new hideout?” Carlos said. He knew, he wasn’t asking because he didn’t know. He was asking because he wanted to hear the Boss  _ say  _ it. 

“We’re expanding,” the Boss said. “This is a hostile takeover.”

“Hell yeah!” Johnny said. Enthusiasm was infectious. 

“How do we know the cops aren’t gonna be back here?” Carlos said. 

“Carlos, don’t worry so much,” the Boss said. “We can handle a few cops.”

Johnny grinned and nodded and tried not to think about that too much. 

“Anyway they cleared the place out and we’re not going to be fully operational here for a long time,” the Boss said. “By the time we’ve got something here worth having they’ll have moved on to trying to clean up Sunnyvale before Ultor docks their pay.”

The doors leading off the sunken hotel took them deeper into the buried city. Johnny had no desire to go exploring, finding the sealed-off streets and empty skeletal buildings reminiscent of some kind of zombie game. Whole buildings were encased by rock and rubble, the interiors reduced to nothing but a memory while the exteriors were stripped back to the concrete bones. The whole time a hollow ringing sound carried through the tunnels, a noise that Johnny couldn’t place or describe but that sang of the dark and the underground, life being brought into somewhere that could have been -- soon would be -- a tomb. The Boss led them through, walking with gun in hand. The enclosed city had no air flowing through, still and murky, the air damp and hard to breathe. It clung to your skin, left you feeling like a film of grime was settling down on you, the dust that was floating off the crumbling walls of the buildings. The next thing Johnny noticed was that the place was not silent. In the stillness, sound carried, and the underground was not empty. 

Some Samedi had escaped the police raid, hidden in the very depths of the underground city, having successfully avoided discovery. Until now. Johnny privately smugly considered that this made him a better cop than the idiots who had missed them the first time.

The Boss fired the first shot, no doubt or hesitation, no waiting for the Samedi to try and bait them. There was an efficiency to their actions that Johnny hadn’t expected, a ready eagerness to get the job done and to have fun doing it. The other Samedi hadn’t been expecting the intrusion, had let themselves fall into the trap of thinking they were safe. But they should have known that the cops weren’t the ones to fear in the first place. 

Although they would have been justified in not expecting the Saints either.

Johnny and Carlos followed in the Boss’ wake but it was their show, the Samedi scrambling to fight back but never managing. Johnny was trying to fight too but part of him was distracted -- the Boss was taking up a lot of his concentration. It was hard to focus on one target when the Boss was dancing around the battlefield like they were a muse of war, tearing through one man after another. They only stopped when it was time to reload, Johnny sliding into place beside them and putting down a Samedi who thought she had a new opportunity. The Boss bumped their shoulder against his in thanks and joy flared inside him so strongly it was dizzying. 

The Boss and Johnny moved together, side by side, falling into the kind of unit they were  _ meant _ to be. Johnny took a hit to the shoulder, a glancing blow. He ducked out, the Boss sweeping in to fill in for him, taking out the Samedi who had been unlucky enough to miss. When the Boss’ back was turned Johnny took care of the soldier on the other side of the street. They worked  _ so well _ together, two halves of a single piece, the barrel and the trigger of a gun. His cracked ribs were letting him down, slowing him when he moved to make a shot, but the Boss knew to compensate for that, knew not like it was instinct, but like it was something they had practiced and rehearsed until they were note-perfect. They could have been doing this for a hundred years. 

It was like being alive for the first time in years, it was like falling in love, it was like being pulled under by the crashing waves and loving it, happy to drown. It seemed like the right thing to do then, for Johnny wrap his arms around the Boss and pull them into a kiss that crushed the air out of both of them. That was the plan, at least.

He grabbed the Boss and pulled them close but they moved first, mouth hot on his, teeth painfully clinking against his when they both moved too fast. It was the kind of awkward, ungainly kiss you would misremember as romantic in the future because as bad a kiss as it was -- and it was a  _ bad  _ kiss --  the only thing that would stick in Johnny’s mind in the future would be how good it felt to finally  _ do  _ it. Mouths open, Johnny’s arm around the Boss’ shoulders, the Boss’ hand balled into a fist in his hair. Feeling their body pressed up against his, that old corny line about not knowing where one of them began and the other ended ran through Johnny’s mind. It was totally inaccurate. He knew exactly where he was, where the Boss was, and he wasn’t close enough. He wanted to be so entangled that it hurt. 

The kissing wasn’t like the fighting, it didn’t feel like something they had always known and would always know. It was like they were teenagers fumbling in the dark for the very first time, blindly trying to learn how to make this work when there were arms and lips and chests that had to be contorted, had to be pushed into that sweet spot. Johnny didn’t know if he just didn’t know how to kiss  _ boys _ or he didn’t know how to kiss  _ the Boss _ . He wasn’t willing to go on this train of thought. He wasn’t willing to do anything except live in this moment for as long as he was physically able to.

The Boss ended it because the Boss saw Carlos walking into the area before Johnny did. Carlos stood in the archway dividing one ex-building from another and said nothing, rubbing the toe of his shoe against the dirt and blood covered stone. The three of them stared at each other like they were in a Mexican standoff and the first one to pull the trigger would be blowing their feelings out into the room.

In the face of mutually assured destruction, the Boss could always be expected to decide that they could get out of it based on a combination of skill, luck, and the complete and sincere belief that they were too good to die.

“Carlos,” the Boss said. Maybe they were going somewhere with that, but Johnny didn’t want to stick around.

In the face of mutually assured destruction, Johnny could always be expected to shoot first and ask questions never. 

He jerked back from the Boss like he had realised the thing under the chair he was touching was someone else’s week old gum. Carlos and the Boss both looked at him and he knew that in the standoff he had fired first, missed, and dropped his gun off a cliff. He needed to recover from this. Gulping down a mouthful of stale air he forced a smile and then realised that looked like he was proud of being caught, or smug, or in someway happy about this arrangement and didn’t have a noise in his head like fifty cymbals being clashed together by the world’s angriest percussionist. 

“I’m not surprised by this,” Carlos said, “if you were expecting me to freak out. I could kind of see it coming.”

How did Carlos know the future and Johnny didn’t? Johnny didn’t know fucking anything until it happened to him. He felt a little sick. He realised that he had actually dropped his gun but it didn’t feel like a good opportunity to pick it up.

“You  _ saw it coming _ ,” Johnny said, like the words were coated in bile and he just wanted to push them out of his mouth.

“I’m not stupid,” Carlos said.

“And I am?” Johnny said.  _ He  _ hadn’t seen it coming. Carlos blinked, not able to follow Johnny’s internal chain of logic. There was a connection there, between being smart and seeing the future, and being too stupid to see the blindingly obvious, but Carlos hadn’t latched onto the twisted connections the same way Johnny had.

“No?” Carlos ventured, not sure what he had missed. He had thought he was being gracious. He shifted his weight from foot to foot uncomfortably, not sure exactly what he had said or done. 

“What are you trying to say?” Johnny said.

“That you two have been all over each other since you first met,” Carlos said, his own voice taking on an angry, defensive edge. His tone did nothing to settle the situation. Johnny took several steps towards Carlos.

Johnny was spitting mad, and he was not used to holding back on his anger. When you were angry, you did something about it. You proved yourself to be someone you didn’t want to piss off. He was ready to push this encounter to its violent conclusion when he saw Boss out of the corner of his eye. There was something about the way Boss was standing, their arms crossed and their face coated in disapproval, that brought Johnny’s mind horribly back to  _ her,  _ and the way she had always known she could bring him to a grinding halt with a glance. He’d been so weak to her. 

Johnny shoved past Carlos, trying to barge their shoulders together, only for Carlos to neatly step aside and avoid the act of aggression entirely. He looked sidelong at Johnny, distaste written all over him. He may have conceded defeat but he was never going to look to Johnny as anything other than an invading force, someone that had no right to be there. Not a  _ real _ Saint.

Which, really, was truthful. Johnny was not a real Saint. Johnny was a cop.

Johnny stood in the empty, abandoned hotel and shivered in the cold air. There weren’t a lot of similarities between the Boss and Aisha but there was a definite something to be said about falling for people who were quite so definitely in charge. A venomous part of him crawled up out of the depths to tell him that this meant everyone was going to think of him as being Boss’  _ bitch _ . He was gripped with raw panic. He had to get out of this now. He had to back off. In his mind he searched desperately for the button to abort mission, jettisoning anything that was compelling him  _ not  _ to scrap this entire burgeoning relationship. 

“I expected you to… Have a different reaction.” He could hear Boss’ voice echoing through the underground towards him as Carlos and Boss headed to the hotel.

“Maybe it was time for me to grow up,” Carlos said, his voice flat. 

They were talking about  _ feelings _ now. Johnny could  _ feel _ his nuts retreating inside his body cavity. Which turned his mind to something else. Jesus, had he actually gotten a little hard from a minute of kissing? How long had it  _ been _ ? 

“I appreciate it,” Boss said, with uncharacteristic honesty. 

There was something else, a sound that could have been a sigh or a laugh or just stray air, but it wasn’t something Johnny had the emotional know-how to be able unpack the meaning of.

“It looks like there’s nobody else here,” Carlos said, blessedly changing the subject as the two of them joined Johnny in the hotel. “Just us now. We own miles of a fucking ghost town.”

“We’re going to focus on the hotel for now,” the Boss said. “The rest of this shithole can wait. I want a club, not a historical reconstruction. For now we bar the doors off and anyone stuck out there can rot.”

Carlos nodded and Johnny did nothing, every muscle in his body rigid and unyielding. He couldn’t bring himself to look at the Boss, unable to rip his eyes off the marble angel statue in the stairway, like she was going to come to life and offer him useful advice. 

“I’ll uh, see you on the surface,” Carlos offered, glancing between Boss and Johnny. He hesitated for a half a second for some kind of confirmation but got nothing, and shrugged instead. He walked away, his footsteps on the stone and marble ringing out through the yawning silence of the caverns until Johnny and the Boss were completely alone.

“What now?” The Boss said. Johnny forced himself to look at them. 

“We see about fixing up this shithole,” Johnny said.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Yeah, I know.”

If Boss was hurt they didn’t show any sign. Johnny knew he had to stop this from getting too heavy. He grinned again, that kind of lazy smile he  _ knew  _ Boss liked. Just a little bit of tooth on show, like he was engaging them in a little joke and he was already halfway to laughing. Boss looked like they were risking relaxing, like they were taking this as confirmation he wasn’t about to blow them both out of the water. They were about to be disappointed. They put a hand on his arm and leaned in and he took a very quick step back, cringing from their touch. 

“Let’s leave some of the mystery,” Johnny said, his mouth drier than the fucking Sahara. It was almost playful. It almost wasn’t a rejection, if you squinted. 

Boss nodded and laughed. Johnny slapped them on the arm like a footballer congratulating another on a good game. Boss looked at him with a smile that had been sketched out by someone who had heard of being happy but possibly not experienced it for themselves. 

“We make a good team,” Johnny said. 

“The best,” Boss said.

“We shouldn’t mess with that,” he said.

The silence that followed could have choked a man to death. 

“Shouldn’t keep Carlos waiting,” Boss said, voice just on the unnerving side of pleasantly polite. 

Boss took off up the stairs without another word, not waiting for Johnny and not looking back. Johnny stayed, his cracked ribs throbbing inside his chest worse than they had done for days. He guessed it had to be his ribs, at least. He couldn’t think of another reason he’d be aching so strongly.

He’d forgotten his gun in the underground. He forced himself to walk through the dead city to find it, ignoring the feeling that he had, like he was crawling out of the cold sea into the colder air and every inch of him was soaked through. After finding the gun and making his way back through the hotel and the mission house above, he found himself alone the parking lot. Carlos and the Boss had already gone. 


End file.
